Soil Carbon in North American, Arctic, and Boreal Regions

Globally, soils contain more than 3 times as much as C as the atmosphere and >4 times more C than the world's biota, therefore even small changes in soil C stocks could lead to large changes in the atmospheric concentration of CO2. Since SOCCR-1, improvements have been made in quantifying stocks and uncertainties in stocks of soil C to a depth of 1 m across North America. Estimates for soil carbon stocks in the US (CONUS + Alaska) range from 151 - 162 Pg C, based on extensive sampling and analysis. Estimates for Canada average about 262 Pg C, but sampling is not as extensive. Soil C for Mexico is calculated as 18 Pg C, but there is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding this value. These soil carbon stocks are sensitive to agricultural management, land use and land cover change, and development and loss of C-rich soils such as wetlands. Climate change is a significant threat although may be partially mitigated by increased plant production. Carbon stored in permafrost zone circumpolar soils is equal to 1330-1580 Pg C, almost twice that contained in the atmosphere and about order of magnitude greater than carbon contained in plant biomass, woody debris, and litter in the boreal and tundra biomes combined. Surface air temperature change is amplified in high latitude regions such that Arctic temperature rise is about 2.5 times faster than for the globe as a whole, and thus 5 - 15% of this carbon is considered vulnerable to release to the atmosphere by the year 2100 following the current trajectory of global and Arctic warming. This amount is likely to be up to an order of magnitude larger loss than the increase in carbon stored in plant biomass under the same changing conditions. Models of soil organic matter dynamics have been greatly improved in the last decade by including greater process-level understanding of factors that affect soil C stabilization and destabilization, yet structural features of many models are still limited in representing Arctic and boreal zone processes.