Continental United States may lose 1.8 petagrams of soil organic carbon under climate change by 2100

Aims: High-resolution information on soils’ vulnerability to climate-induced soil organic carbon (SOC) loss can enable environmental scientists, land managers, and policy makers to develop targeted mitigation strategies. This study aims to estimate baseline and decadal changes in continental US surface SOC stocks under future emission scenarios.
 
Location: Continental United States
 
Time Period: 2014-2100
 
Results: Baseline SOC projections from ML approaches captured more than 50% of variability in SOC observations, whereas ESMs represented only 6-16% of observed SOC variability. ML estimates showed a mean total loss of 1.8 Pg C from US surface soils under the high-emission scenario by 2100, whereas ESMs showed no significant change in SOC stocks with wide variation among ESMs. Both ML and ESM predictions agree on the direction of SOC change (net emissions or sequestration) across 46%–51% of continental US land area. These differences are attributable to the high-resolution site-spec...