Monday, November 13, 2006 - 4:15 PM
119-12
Soil Carbon Storage and the North American Carbon Program: Needs and Opportunities.
This presentation will address research needs and opportunities of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program’s (CCSP) North American Carbon Program (NACP), a coordinated interagency effort to address the question “What are the magnitudes and distributions of North American carbon sources and sinks on seasonal to centennial time scales, and what are the processes controlling their dynamics?” (from the 2003 CCSP Strategic Plan). In particular, the NACP will quantify the magnitudes and distributions of terrestrial, freshwater, oceanic, and atmospheric carbon sources and sinks for North America and adjacent oceans; improve understanding of processes controlling source and sink dynamics; and produce consistent analyses of North America's carbon budget. Scientists and program managers are beginning to recognize more the importance of soil carbon in these analyses, both in terms of processes and dynamics and soil carbon stocks, but the importance of differences in soil properties, particularly soil mineralogy, structure, and chemistry is generally lacking in much of the analyses and projects supported by the different agencies. A major challenge is to integrate research in soil carbon properties and dynamics into models at different scales that are relevant to coupled carbon-climate models and decision support. A major ongoing effort is the Mid-Continent NACP Intensive Field campaign to compare integrated, ground-based soil, crop and forest carbon data and process models with atmospheric measurements and models based on towers, air-borne sensors, and satellite. Some other potential areas of emphasis in the different funding agencies that are relevant to soil scientists are: A) Carbon fluxes from soils to water to ocean margins; B) Scaling carbon fluxes from sites to landscapes to regions; C) Determining sequestration capacity for carbon in wetlands; D) Carbon and Water Balances in Managed Ecosystems in China and the
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