Australian net (1950s-1990) soil organic carbon erosion: Implications for CO2 emission and land-atmosphere modelling
The debate remains unresolved about soil erosion substantially offsetting fossil fuel emissions and acting as an important source or sink of CO2. There is little historical land use and management context to this debate, which is central to Australia's recent past of European settlement, agricu...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
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Copernicus GmbH
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/74637 |
| _version_ | 1848763330834989056 |
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| author | Chappell, A. Webb, N. Viscarra Rossel, Raphael Bui, E. |
| author_facet | Chappell, A. Webb, N. Viscarra Rossel, Raphael Bui, E. |
| author_sort | Chappell, A. |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | The debate remains unresolved about soil erosion substantially offsetting fossil fuel emissions and acting as an important source or sink of CO2. There is little historical land use and management context to this debate, which is central to Australia's recent past of European settlement, agricultural expansion and agriculturally-induced soil erosion. We use "catchment" scale (~25 km2) estimates of 137Cs-derived net (1950s-1990) soil redistribution of all processes (wind, water and tillage) to calculate the net soil organic carbon (SOC) redistribution across Australia. We approximate the selective removal of SOC at net eroding locations and SOC enrichment of transported sediment and net depositional locations. We map net (1950s-1990) SOC redistribution across Australia and estimate erosion by all processes to be ~4 Tg SOC yr-1, which represents a loss of ~2% of the total carbon stock (0-10 cm) of Australia. Assuming this net SOC loss is mineralised, the flux (~15 Tg CO2-equivalents yr−1) represents an omitted 12% of CO2-equivalent emissions from all carbon pools in Australia. Although a small source of uncertainty in the Australian carbon budget, the mass flux interacts with energy and water fluxes, and its omission from land surface models likely creates more uncertainty than has been previously recognised. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T11:01:45Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-74637 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T11:01:45Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Copernicus GmbH |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-746372023-08-02T06:39:15Z Australian net (1950s-1990) soil organic carbon erosion: Implications for CO2 emission and land-atmosphere modelling Chappell, A. Webb, N. Viscarra Rossel, Raphael Bui, E. The debate remains unresolved about soil erosion substantially offsetting fossil fuel emissions and acting as an important source or sink of CO2. There is little historical land use and management context to this debate, which is central to Australia's recent past of European settlement, agricultural expansion and agriculturally-induced soil erosion. We use "catchment" scale (~25 km2) estimates of 137Cs-derived net (1950s-1990) soil redistribution of all processes (wind, water and tillage) to calculate the net soil organic carbon (SOC) redistribution across Australia. We approximate the selective removal of SOC at net eroding locations and SOC enrichment of transported sediment and net depositional locations. We map net (1950s-1990) SOC redistribution across Australia and estimate erosion by all processes to be ~4 Tg SOC yr-1, which represents a loss of ~2% of the total carbon stock (0-10 cm) of Australia. Assuming this net SOC loss is mineralised, the flux (~15 Tg CO2-equivalents yr−1) represents an omitted 12% of CO2-equivalent emissions from all carbon pools in Australia. Although a small source of uncertainty in the Australian carbon budget, the mass flux interacts with energy and water fluxes, and its omission from land surface models likely creates more uncertainty than has been previously recognised. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/74637 10.5194/bg-11-5235-2014 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Copernicus GmbH fulltext |
| spellingShingle | Chappell, A. Webb, N. Viscarra Rossel, Raphael Bui, E. Australian net (1950s-1990) soil organic carbon erosion: Implications for CO2 emission and land-atmosphere modelling |
| title | Australian net (1950s-1990) soil organic carbon erosion: Implications for CO2 emission and land-atmosphere modelling |
| title_full | Australian net (1950s-1990) soil organic carbon erosion: Implications for CO2 emission and land-atmosphere modelling |
| title_fullStr | Australian net (1950s-1990) soil organic carbon erosion: Implications for CO2 emission and land-atmosphere modelling |
| title_full_unstemmed | Australian net (1950s-1990) soil organic carbon erosion: Implications for CO2 emission and land-atmosphere modelling |
| title_short | Australian net (1950s-1990) soil organic carbon erosion: Implications for CO2 emission and land-atmosphere modelling |
| title_sort | australian net (1950s-1990) soil organic carbon erosion: implications for co2 emission and land-atmosphere modelling |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/74637 |