SSI Brown Bag Speaker Series – November 7, 2017

“Using Spatial Modeling to Link Soil Organic Carbon Changes to Anthropogenic Effects and Efforts”
Dr. An-Min Wu, Lecturer, USC Spatial Sciences Institute

https://bluejeans.com/638308465

Human activities have greatly altered the global carbon cycle. As the largest terrestrial carbon reservoir, soil is sensitive to disturbances; however, whether the fate of soil organic carbon due to human disturbances as a carbon source or sink to the atmosphere is uncertain. Identifying the magnitude and consequences of soil organic carbon stock and stock changes is critical for understanding the fate of SOC. In this talk, I will describe two projects that use spatial modeling to understand human disturbances and efforts about soil organic carbon in different spatial and temporal scales. First, I will illustrate the spatial predictive models for soil deposition and soil organic carbon due to agricultural erosion in the glaciated landscape in Minnesota. The hillslope models were built upon local and upslope terrain attributes to investigate the spatial distribution and volume of soil deposition due to agricultural erosion, and to assess the change of soil organic carbon stock from this erosion-induced soil redistribution since the settlement. Second, I will talk about detectable changes in soil organic carbon stock in the forests of the contiguous USA. Using the Forest Inventory and Analysis database, the changes in soil organic carbon stock in main forest type groups were investigated to improve sampling strategies for the estimation of US carbon stock and stock changes in the submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.