Soil respiration signals in response to sustainable soil management practices enhance soil organic carbon stocks

Development of a spatial-temporal and data-driven model of soil respiration at the global scale based on soil temperature, yearly soil moisture, and soil organic carbon (C) estimates. Prediction of soil respiration on an annual basis (1991-2018) with relatively high accuracy (NSE 0.69, CCC 0.82). Lower soil respiration trends, higher soil respiration magnitudes, and higher soil organic C stocks across areas experiencing the presence of sustainable soil management practices.

SOMOSPIE: A modular SOil MOisture SPatial Inference Engine based on data driven decisions

The current availability of soil moisture data over large areas comes from satellite remote sensing technologies (i.e., radar-based systems), but these data have coarse resolution and often exhibit large spatial information gaps. Where data are too coarse or sparse for a given need (e.g., precision agriculture), one can leverage machine-learning techniques coupled with other sources of environmental information (e.g., topography) to generate gap-free information and at a finer spatial resolution (i.e., increased granularity). To this end, we develop a spatial inference engine consisting of modular stages for processing spatial environmental data, generating predictions with machine-learning techniques, and analyzing these predictions. We demonstrate the functionality of this approach and the effects of data processing choices via multiple prediction maps over a United States ecological region with a highly diverse soil moisture profile (i.e., the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plains). The relevance of our work derives from a pressing need to improve the spatial representation of soil moisture for applications in environmental sciences (e.g., ecological niche modeling, carbon monitoring systems, and other Earth system models) and precision agriculture (e.g., optimizing irrigation practices and other land management decisions).