Assessment of Soil Organic Carbon Stocks under the Future Climate and Land Cover Changes in Europe

Soil organic carbon plays an important role in the carbon cycling of terrestrial ecosystems, variations in soil organic carbon stocks are very important for the ecosystem. In this study, a geostatistical model was used for predicting current and future soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in Europe. The first phase of the study predicts current soil organic carbon content by using stepwise multiple linear regression and ordinary kriging and the second phase of the study projects the soil organic carbon to the year 2050 by using a set of predictors. We demonstrate here an approach to predict present and future soil organic carbon stocks by using climate, land cover, terrain and soil data and their projections. The covariates were selected as their role in the carbon cycle and their availability for the future model. The regression-kriging as a base model is predicting current SOC stocks in Europe by using set of covariates and dense SOC measurements coming from LUCAS Soil Database. Then the base model delivers coefficients for each of the covariates (regression rules) to the future model. In practice, the regression rules are the knowledge of different processes affecting soil organic carbon in soil and they are taking place also in the future projection. The overall model produced soil organic carbon maps which reflects the current status and the future predictions (2050) based on climate and land cover projections. The data of the present climate conditions (long-term average (1950 - 2000)) and the future projections for 2050 were obtained from WorldClim data portal. The future climate projections are the recent climate projections mentioned in the Fifth Assessment IPCC report. These projections were extracted from the global climate models (GCM) for four representative concentration pathways (RCPs). One of the main inputs of the model is land cover data which are the outputs of the Land-Use-based Integrated Sustainability Assessment Modelling Platform (LUISA) of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The results suggest an overall increase in SOC stocks by 2050 in Europe (EU26) under all climate and land cover scenarios, but the extent of the increase varies among the climate model and emissions scenarios.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen