How Are Deep Soils Responding to Warming?

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2024-04-18 13:30:07

Soil ecosystems play fundamental roles in sustaining food and fiber production, improving water quality and availability, sequestering carbon, and providing other societal needs. Climate warming affects the ability of soils to provide these ecosystem services, likely posing broad consequences for food security and the stability of ecosystems belowground and aboveground. To predict and manage these consequences effectively, it is crucial to understand how soil processes respond to rising temperatures.

Scientists worldwide have been conducting deep-soil-warming experiments, in which soil layers are deliberately heated to observe how plants, soils, and microbes respond. Recently, though, researchers have recognized the importance of comparing and integrating findings from these experiments to help reveal new insights.

The global DeepSoil 2100 network emerged from conversations among soil scientists convened in 2020 by one of us (M.W.I.S.) in response to this need for coordination. The network links field and lab researchers, modelers, data providers, and data users, and it provides a platform for sharing practical guidance for running field experiments, reporting data, discussing results, and exploring data synergies. Its goals include synthesizing results from soil-warming experiments, making these findings more accessible to a broader scientific community, and, ultimately, facilitating more informed predictions and decisionmaking regarding climate change and strategies for mitigation and adaptation.