soil carbon

Knowing that soils are a potential climate change time-bomb is nothing new -- but now, for the first time, a group of international scientists have found a way to distinguish just how much of these ancient carbon stores are being lost to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

This means that in the future they may be able to accurately forecast how loss of soil carbon will impact on climate change.

Scientists have recently integrated remote sensing products with a national carbon accounting framework to quantify soil carbon fluxes over large regions.

This advancement allows for the identification of soil and environmental attributes that are associated with unique combinations of planted crop and associated management inputs at the sub-county scale.

The study illustrates the ability to model carbon dynamics associated with actual crop fields for entire regions or continents.