The Roles of Soil Science in Global Climate Change Mitigation and Evaluation of Ecosystem Services.

Global climate change, increasing human populations, and anthropogenic activities are increasing stresses upon natural ecosystem processes at scales, rates and with consequences not previously observed.  Humans are recognizing the need to mitigate the effects of greenhouse gases that fuel climate change and the necessity of properly understanding and valuing ecosystem services essential to life on Earth.  Terrestrial carbon sequestration is one strategy for helping to mitigate climate change.  Both carbon sequestration and identifying the patterns, extents and processes of ecosystem services will depend upon understanding and quantifying the temporal and spatial distributions of water, nutrients and energy.  Existing soil surveys and soil data will be important components of these evaluations.  Interpreting the soil surveys will be a challenge for managers, planners and scientists not familiar with the taxonomic principles used to identify soils in the field, and the philosophies and procedures of soil mapping.  However, soils data do not exist in either sufficient quantity or quality to allow extrapolation across all scales and landscapes, particularly if attempts will be made to “bundle” ecosystem services.  Soil data important to quantify ecosystem services and ecological processes often do not exist, or were not collected in ways or with the intensity needed to be precise or appropriate for these applications.  Soil science, to be relevant to today’s global environmental planning and mitigation needs, must address these new needs.  Soil Scientists must learn to communicate effectively with non-traditional clients, and should begin the process of learning what soil and geomorphic data are required and the scales, both temporal and spatial, at which these data should be acquired to meet new user needs.  Soil scientists also need to be willing to work with ancillary disciplines to ensure that the soil-landform data are applied to maps and interpretations in ways that are most precise and beneficial.