USGS Soil Carbon Research @ Menlo Park
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| lower 48 | ||
Digging a soil pit in Santa Cruz, CA. Click on this picture for
a larger version.
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Microbial communities and C cycling processes across continental N. America Understanding gradients in soil chemical and biological properties at the continental scale has been the goal of the US Geological Survey for more than 100 years, and the specific objective of the recently established Geochemical Landscapes Project. The Geochemical Landscapes Project provides multi-scale perspective on the geochemical landscape of the United States and Southern Canada, focusing on understanding of the processes controlling elemental distribution, migration, and bioavailability in soils. The project is sampling the continent at 40 km resolution to complete a suite of 'geoavailable' and 'bioavailable' fractions of the soil by partial extraction methods, measurement of selected organic contaminants, soil textural and hydrologic properties, and characterization of the soil microbial communities and soil C fractions. Thus the transect samples are a well characterized, large scale and spatially explicit group with which to examine soil C storage and C cycling processes in relation to soil forming factors such as climate, vegetation, parent material, age, relief, and human impact such as land use change.Santa Cruz A soil chronosequence of coastal terraces near Santa Cruz was first studied by USGS in the 1980's (Pinney et al., 2002) and then again by USGS in the 2000's ( Munster and Harden, 2002) in an effort to link soil formation to mineral weathering ( White et al., 2008) and to carbon stabilization mechanisms, such as in terreces to the north ( Masiello et al, 2004).back to the projects page... |
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U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://carbon.wr.usgs.gov/lower48.html
Page Contact Information: Kristen Manies
Page Last Modified: Thursday, 13-Nov-2008 15:00:53 EST
