Abstract
Erosion exerts control on soil organic carbon (SOC) and both erosion and SOC are affected by climate. To what extent temperature controls the coupling between these erosion–C interactions remains unclear. Using 137Cs and SOC inventories from catchments spanning different climates, we find that increasing decomposition rates with temperature result in the efficient replacement of SOC laterally lost by erosion in eroding areas but lower preservation of deposited SOC in depositional areas. When combined at the landscape level, the erosion-induced C sink strength per unit lateral SOC flux increases with temperature from 0.19 g C (g C)−1 at 0 °C to 0.24 g C (g C)−1 at 25 °C. We estimated that the global C sink of 0.050 Pg C yr−1 induced by water erosion on croplands increases by 7% because of climate change. Our results reveal a negative feedback loop between climate change and erosion-induced disturbance to SOC cycling.
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Data availability
The SOC stock of the top 1 m generated by the Harmonized World Soil Database is available at https://www.fao.org/soils-portal/data-hub/soil-maps-and-databases/harmonized-world-soil-database-v12/en/. The SOC stock of the top 1 m generated by the Northern Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database is available at https://bolin.su.se/data/ncscd/tiff.php. The MODIS NPP dataset is available at http://files.ntsg.umt.edu/data/NTSG_Products/MOD17/GeoTIFF/MOD17A3/. The land use data generated by the History database of the Global Environment (HYDE) is available at https://dataportaal.pbl.nl/downloads/HYDE/. The mean annual temperature provided by the Climatic Research Unit is available at https://www.uea.ac.uk/web/groups-and-centres/climatic-research-unit/data. The mean annual precipitation provided by the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre is available at https://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/GPCC/html/fulldata-monthly_v2018_doi_download.html. The MODIS potential evapotranspiration (PET) data are available at http://files.ntsg.umt.edu/data/NTSG_Products/MOD16/MOD16A3.105_MERRAGMAO/. The mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation as well as the surface soil moisture (0–10 cm) of historical simulations and future projections generated by global climate models of coupled model intercomparison project (CMIP6) are available at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/. The basemap data used to create figures were downloaded at http://naturalearthdata.com/downloads/. The 137Cs inventory and SOC stock data are available from the corresponding author on request. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The codes of C–erosion coupling model programmed in MATLAB are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7224539 (ref. 59).
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Acknowledgements
Z.W., G.T. and J.Q. are funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 42171025 and 41971031). A.N. is funded by the MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ (grant no. PID2019-104857RB-I00 and PID2019-103946RJ-100).
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Z.W. and Y.Z. conceived the research, performed the analysis and co-wrote the paper. G.G., G.T., T.A.Q., J.Q., A.N., H.F., Q.T. and K.V.O. assisted in the interpretation of the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Nature Climate Change thanks Asmeret Berhe, Julian Campo, Amaury Frankl, Priyanka Singh and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Locations of the cropland sites in this study.
The numbers in squares denote the identification of the catchment. Details of the study sites are provided in Supplementary Table 1.
Extended Data Fig. 2 Relationships between normalized SOC stocks and soil redistribution rates for the cropland sites.
Negative values of soil redistribution rates indicate erosion, while the positive values indicate deposition. The SOC stock of each soil profile is normalized by being divided by the SOC stock of the reference sites (as denoted with red asterisks) not subjected to erosion or deposition. The regression lines are set to pass through the reference value so that the sensitivity of normalized SOC stocks to the variation of soil distribution rates can be assessed by comparing the slopes of these linear regression lines. The number in parentheses denote the identification of the catchment, which is shown in Supplementary Table 1.
Extended Data Fig. 3 SOC cycling in eroding croplands in scenarios of various C input rates.
a, Variation of SOC stocks with soil redistribution rates. b, Variation of the normalized SOC stocks with soil redistribution rates. c, Variation of replace ratios of lost SOC due to erosion in the eroding area with soil redistribution rates and variation of burial efficiencies of deposited SOC in the depositional area with soil redistribution rates. d, Variation of the erosion-induced C sink per unit lateral C flux with C input rates. In a, b and c, the negative values of soil redistribution rates indicate erosion, while the positive values indicate deposition. In b, the SOC stock of each soil profile is normalized by being divided by the SOC stock of the reference sites not subjected to erosion or deposition. For a hillslope with a given soil redistribution pattern, variations in normalized SOC stocks, C replacement and burial efficiency and the C sink strength per unit of lateral SOC flux are independent of the C input rate.
Extended Data Fig. 4 SOC cycling in eroding croplands in scenarios of various C decomposition rates.
a, Variation of SOC stocks with soil redistribution rates. b, Variation of the normalized SOC stocks with soil redistribution rates. c, Variation of replace ratios of lost SOC due to erosion in the eroding area with soil redistribution rates and variation of burial efficiencies of deposited SOC in the depositional area with soil redistribution rates. d, Variation of the erosion-induced total C sink per unit lateral C flux with C decomposition rates. In a, b and c, the negative values of soil redistribution rate indicate erosion, while the positive values indicate deposition. In b, the SOC stock of each soil profile is normalized by being divided by the SOC stock of the reference sites not subjected to erosion or deposition.
Extended Data Fig. 5 SOC cycling in eroding croplands in scenarios of varying temperature.
a, Variation of SOC stocks with soil redistribution rates. b, Variation of the normalized SOC stocks with soil redistribution rates. c, Variation of replacement ratio of lost SOC due to erosion in the eroding area with soil redistribution rates and variation of burial efficiency of deposited SOC in the depositional area with soil redistribution rates. d, Variation of the erosion-induced C sink per unit lateral C flux with temperature. In a, b and c, the negative values of soil redistribution rate indicate erosion, while the positive values indicate deposition. In b, the SOC stock of each soil profile is normalized by being divided by the SOC stock of the reference sites not subjected to erosion or deposition.
Extended Data Fig. 6 Relationships between erosion and climatic factors in croplands derived from a global estimation of agricultural erosion21.
a, Soil erosion rate versus mean annual precipitation. b, Mean annual precipitation versus mean annual temperature. c, Soil erosion rate versus mean annual temperature. d, C erosion rate versus mean annual temperature.
Extended Data Fig. 7 The effects of soil moisture on the relationships between temperature and various SOC cycling metrics.
a, The relationship between soil moisture and the coefficient denoting the sensitivity of lateral SOC fluxes caused by erosion to the variation of mean annual temperature. Details of the regression between lateral SOC fluxes by erosion and temperature under various soil moisture conditions are displayed in Supplementary Fig. 3. b, The relationship between soil moisture and the coefficient denoting the sensitivity of SOC decomposition rates to the variation of mean annual temperature. Details of the regression between SOC decomposition rates and temperature under various soil moisture conditions are displayed in Supplementary Fig. 4. c, The relationship between soil moisture and the coefficient denoting the sensitivity of the C sink strength per unit lateral SOC flux to the variation of mean annual temperature. Details of the regression between the C sink strength per unit lateral SOC flux and temperature under various soil moisture conditions are displayed in Supplementary Fig. 5. d, The relationship between soil moisture and the coefficient denoting the sensitivity of the C sink strength per unit cropland area to the variation of mean annual temperature. Details of the regression between the C sink strength per unit cropland area and temperature under various soil moisture conditions are displayed in Supplementary Fig. 6.
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Wang, Z., Zhang, Y., Govers, G. et al. Temperature effect on erosion-induced disturbances to soil organic carbon cycling. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 174–181 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01562-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01562-8
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