Authors
Chien-Lu Ping, Gary J Michaelson, Mark T Jorgenson, John M Kimble, Howard Epstein, Vladimir E Romanovsky, Donald A Walker
Publication date
2008/9
Journal
Nature Geoscience
Volume
1
Issue
9
Pages
615-619
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK
Description
The Arctic soil organic-carbon pool is a significant, but poorly constrained, carbon store. The most cited pool size estimates are based on a study that severely undersamples Arctic soils, with only five out of the 48 soils examined actually from the Arctic region. Furthermore, previous measurements have been confined to the top 40 cm of soil. Here, we present 1-m-deep measurements of soil organic carbon obtained at 117 locations in the North American Arctic region. To this dataset we add previously published measurements to generate a total sample size of 139 North American Arctic soils. We show that soil organic-carbon stores are highly dependent on landscape type, being highest in lowland and hilly upland soils, where values average 55.1 and 40.6 kg soil organic carbon m−2 respectively, and lowest in rubbleland and mountain soils, where values average 3.4 and 3.8 kg soil organic carbon m−2 …
Total citations
Scholar articles
CL Ping, GJ Michaelson, MT Jorgenson, JM Kimble… - Nature Geoscience, 2008