Forecasts of landscape evolution and soil organic carbon redistribution in the Midwestern United States

In the Midwestern US, agricultural practices, i.e. tillage, causes soil erosion that changes how soil organic carbon (SOC) is naturally distributed across the landscape. We use a landscape evolution model (LEM) to predict how landscapes and SOC change from 2020 to 2520 across 410 counties located in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Initial distributions of SOC were estimated with the gridded Soil Survey Geographic (gSSURGO) dataset, maintained by the US Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. The initial topography was built from various state LiDAR-derived (Light Detection and Ranging) digital elevation models.

For each county, the model outputs .tif files (every 80 years) that show the spatial distribution of elevation and SOC. In addition, .csv files are generated that record county-averaged values of soil erosion, soil deposition, SOC erosion, SOC deposition, and other variables at a higher temporal resolution (every 0.25 years).