Influence of soil porous microstructure on the distribution and transport of SOM
EMSL Project ID
60102
Abstract
There is a need to better understand the relationship between soil pore structure and the fate and transport of soil organic matter (SOM) to improve process-based predictions of OM accessibility. High-resolution pore network (PN) data provides quantitative metrics for the connectivity and geometry of soil pores, which exert primary controls on the distribution and destabilization of SOM. However, PN measurements remain limited to select soils and do not have a good representation of different soil textures/ taxonomies representing different climates and environmental conditions. This in turn, is manifested in a gap that exists in biogeochemical modeling where there is not enough pore-scale data for the generalization and implementation of soil texture-structure relationships (e.g. response to perturbation, climate change included) in models. Ideally, a "library" of 3D soil PN models encompassing a diverse range of soil textural classes is needed for incorporating soil physical structure into SOM biogeochemical models. The objective of this work is to create soil microstructure and PN connectivity data by 3D imaging of a range of select soils, measure the distribution of both the mobile and immobile parts of OM in the soils, characterize the nature of these OM components, and use the above information in reactive transport models to better understand porous microstructure-transport relationships and predict the distribution and accessibility of SOM in various soils.
Project Details
Start Date
2021-10-29
End Date
N/A
Status
Active
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members