Torbern Tagesson

1 month ago | nature.com | Yumiao Wang |Rasmus Fensholt |Xiaoye Tong |Torbern Tagesson |Xiaoxin Zhang |Jonas Ardö | +6 more

Soil quality is fundamental to nutrient-rich food production and the sustainability of terrestrial ecosystems. However, inappropriate agricultural practices often lead to persistent soil exposure to air and sunlight, which increases soil organic matter losses and erosion risks, particularly under climate extremes. Here, we provide a satellite-based mapping of daily soil exposure occurrence across global croplands from 2001 to 2022 and evaluate the associated degradation risks caused by extreme climate events. We find that while 57% of global croplands experienced a reduction in soil exposure duration in the past two decades, 86% are increasingly subjected to climate extremes. The areas exposed to increasing climate extremes tend to have higher soil organic carbon levels, indicating an intensified degradation risk of global nutrient-rich cropland soils. Our study offers spatio-temporally explicit insights into global cropland soil exposure and its vulnerability to climate extremes, providing evidence to support improvements in sustainable agriculture practices. This paper uses satellite data from 2001 to 2022 to analyze soil exposure in croplands. It shows that while soil exposure duration declined in 57% of croplands, 86% face more climate extremes, threatening soil health.

Oct 25, 2023 | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Torbern Tagesson |Julia Kelly |Guy Schurgers |Feng Tian

1 INTRODUCTION Terrestrial vegetation absorbs approximately one third of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions globally, a critical ecosystem service mitigating climate change (Friedlingstein et al., 2020). The net exchange of carbon between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere is the small yet important difference between the two large exchange processes gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (Reco).