EAR-Climate: Geomorphic controls on soil organic carbon in fire-prone erosional landscapes

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Soil carbon from organic material constitutes a substantial component of the global carbon cycle and is a resource of increasing management interest. In non-agricultural settings, such as hilly and mountainous terrain that dominates the western United States, accurate data showing how soil organic carbon is distributed and changes following wildfire is lacking. This project will collect data on the extent, depth, and age of soil organic carbon at recently-burned mountainous study sites in southwest Oregon, and it will examine the factors that affect soil organic carbon changes in such landscapes. This research will help to inform soil management schemes, including efforts to sequester carbon in soils to combat climate change. The project team will also actively contribute to experiential learning initiatives at the University of Oregon, which seek to empower students from historically underrepresented groups toward pursuing interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and it will support training for a female graduate student.This project will quantify the functional relationships between topography, soil properties, and soil organic carbon, which can be applied to an array of eroding, soil-mantled landscapes across the world. Through the coupling of geomorphic theory for soil production and transport, high-resolution topography generated from airborne lidar, and field-derived ecological and biogeochemical data, this project will track changes in soil organic carbon pools on hillslopes that span a range of erosion rates and morphologic characteristics. In addition, using data from study sites in southwest Oregon, this project will determine how disturbance and forest succession affect soil organic carbon amounts and permanence, assessed through the quantification of carbon stocks combined with radiometric dating, and thus determine the legacy of past and future wildfires. The project's integrative framework can be calibrated and applied in different ecoregions to map soil carbon in a fashion that allows for rapid and accurate upscaling. This project will advance the potential of critical zone science to improve carbon cycling predictions under global environmental change. Improved understanding of soil organic carbon will contribute to practical applications in land management and global climate model development. In addition, the project will help to advance three initiatives at the University of Oregon toward broadening participation in STEM, and it will support training for a female graduate student.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.