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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Data for "Soil texture and environmental conditions influence the biogeochemical responses of soils to drought and flooding"

This dataset contains data used for the paper "Soil texture and environmental conditions influence the biogeochemical responses of soils to drought and flooding". The Related References field will be updated with a full citation when available.Climate change is intensifying the global water cycle, with increased frequency of drought and flood. Water is an important driver of soil carbon dynamics, and it is crucial to understand how moisture disturbances will affect carbon availability and fluxes in soils. Here we investigate the role of water in substrate-microbe connectivity and soil carbon cycling under extreme moisture conditions. We collected soils from Alaska, Florida, and Washington USA, and incubated them under Drought and Flood conditions. Drought had a stronger effect on soil respiration, pore-water carbon, and microbial community composition than flooding. Soil response was not consistent across sites, and was influenced by site-level pedological and environmental factors. Soil texture and porosity can influence microbial access to substrates through the pore network, driving the chemical response. Further, the microbial communities are adapted to the historic stress conditions at their sites and therefore show site-specific responses to drought and flood.This dataset contains a compressed (.zip) archive of the data and R scripts used for this manuscript. The dataset includes files in .csv and .txt format, which can be accessed and processed using MS Excel or R. This archive can also be accessed on GitHub at https://github.com/kaizadp/TES_3Soils_2021 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4792655).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2000

BOREAS TE-2 NSA Soil Lab Data

This data set contains the major soil properties of soil samples collected in 1994 at the tower flux sites in the Northern Study Area (NSA). The soil samples were collected by Hugo Veldhuis and his staff from the University of Manitoba. The mineral soil samples were largely analyzed by Barry Goetz, under the supervision of Dr. Harold Rostad at the University of Saskatchewan. The organic soil samples were largely analyzed by Peter Haluschak, under the supervision of Hugo Veldhuis at the Centre for Land and Biological Resources Research in Winnipeg, Manitoba. During the course of field investigation and mapping, selected surface and subsurface soil samples were collected for laboratory analysis. These samples were used as benchmark references for specific soil attributes in general soil characterization. Detailed soil sampling, description, and laboratory analysis were performed on selected modal soils to provide examples of common soil physical and chemical characteristics in the study area. The soil properties that were determined include soil horizon; dry soil color; pH; bulk density; total, organic, and inorganic carbon; electric conductivity; cation exchange capacity; exchangeable sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and hydrogen; water content at 0.01, 0.033, and 1.5 MPascals; nitrogen; phosphorus: particle size distribution; texture; pH of the mineral soil and of the organic soil; extractable acid; and sulfur. These data are stored in ASCII text files. The data files are available on a CD-ROM (see document number 20010000884), or from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC).

Veldhuis, Hugo↗
DOE OSTI2018

A Comparison of Si-Based Cameras for Imaging Luminescence from Photovoltaic Materials and Devices

Evaluation of soiling loss on PV modules based on field measurements is usually a time consuming and expensive undertaking. A laboratory technique using acetonitrile as a carrier solvent is being discussed in the literature. In this work a low-cost artificial dust deposition technique using water as carrier solvent is presented. Dust samples deposited using the two carrier solvents were compared using FTIR analysis, as well as the short circuit current and spectral losses in solar cells overlaid with soiled glass. Acetonitrile is seen to modify the chemical composition of the dust substantially. The uniformity of dust deposited using water is seen to be adequate for systematic analysis of the impact of soiling on PV modules. Acetonitrile based deposition is seen to overestimate the losses.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2017

Shifts in pore connectivity from precipitation versus groundwater rewetting increases soil carbon loss after drought

Droughts and other extreme precipitation events are predicted to increase in intensity, duration and extent, with uncertain implications for terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration. Soil wetting from above (precipitation) results in a characteristically different pattern of pore-filling than wetting from below (groundwater), with larger, well-connected pores filling before finer pore spaces, unlike groundwater rise in which capillary forces saturate the finest pores first. Here we demonstrate that pore-scale wetting patterns interact with antecedent soil moisture conditions to alter pore-, core- and field-scale C dynamics. Drought legacy and wetting direction are perhaps more important determinants of short-term C mineralization than current soil moisture content in these soils. Our results highlight that microbial access to C is not solely limited by physical protection, but also by drought or wetting-induced shifts in hydrologic connectivity. We argue that models should treat soil moisture within a three-dimensional framework emphasizing hydrologic conduits for C and resource diffusion.

Carbon↗
NASA NTRS2019

Passive/active Microwave Soil Moisture Change Disaggregation Using Smapvex12 Data

The SMAPVEX12 (Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Validation Experiment 2012) experiment was conducted during June-July 2012 in Manitoba, Canada with the goal of collecting remote sensing data and ground measurements for the development and testing of soil moisture retrieval algorithms under varying vegetation and soil conditions for the SMAP satellite. The aircraft based soil moisture data provided by the passive/active microwave sensor PALS (Passive and Active L-band System) has a nominal spatial resolution of 1600 m. However, this resolution is not compatible with agricultural, meteorological and hydrological studies that require high spatial resolutions and this issue can be solved by soil moisture disaggregation. The soil moisture disaggregation algorithm integrates radiometer soil moisture retrievals and high-resolution radar observations and it can provide soil moisture estimates at a finer scale than the radiometer data alone. In this study, a change detection algorithm was used for disaggregation of coarse resolution passive microwave soil moisture retrievals with radar backscatter coefficients obtained from the higher spatial resolution UAVSAR (Unmanned Air Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar) at crop field scale. The accuracy of the disaggregated change in soil moisture was evaluated using ground based soil moisture measurements collected during SMAPVEX12 campaign. The results showed that soil moisture spatial variabilities were better characterized by the disaggregated change in soil moisture estimates at 5 m / 800 m resolution as well as good agreement with in situ measurements. It also showed that VWC (Vegetation Water Content) did not have a big impact on disaggregation algorithm performance, with R2 of the disaggregated results ranging 0.628-0.794. The 5 m and 800m resolution disaggregated soil moisture did no show significant difference in statistical performance variables.

Radar Backscatter↗
NASA NTRS2020

SMAP Validation Experiment 2019-2020 (SMAPVEX19/20): Detection of Soil Moisture Under Forest Canopy

The retrieval of soil moisture under forest canopy has long been an important goal for low frequency remote sensing. The NASA mission started a dedicated field experiment in May 2019 by deploying two temporary soil moisture networks in northeast US that cover two separate SMAP pixels with variable degree of forest cover. The measurements will run through 2020 and they will be augmented with two intensive observation periods (IOP). The first IOP will be conducted in June-July 2020 and the other one in October 2020. The IOPs will see deployment of the airborne PALS (Passive Active L-band sensor) instrument, which is similar to the SMAP instrument, and intensive manual measurements of soil moisture and vegetation. The measurements also include tower-based radiometer observations with ground truth measurements within the instrument footprint. The early results have shown that the SMAP measurement signal at L-band is sensitive to soil moisture changes observed on the ground.

Andreas Colliander↗
NASA NTRS2021

SMAP Validation Experiment 2019-2021 (SMAPVEX19-21): Detection of Soil Moisture Under Temperate Forest Canopy

The retrieval of soil moisture under forest canopy has long been an important goal for low frequency remote sensing. The NASA mission started a dedicated field experiment in May 2019 by deploying two temporary soil moisture networks in northeast US that cover two separate SMAP pixels with variable degree of forest cover. The measurements will be augmented with two intensive observation periods (IOP). The first IOP is planned for July and the other one for October. The IOPs will see deployment of the airborne PALS (Passive Active L-band sensor) instrument, which is similar to the SMAP instrument, and intensive manual measurements of soil moisture and vegetation. The measurements also include tower-based radiometer observations with ground truth measurements within the instrument footprint. The early results have shown that the SMAP measurement signal at L-band is sensitive to soil moisture changes observed on the ground.

Yueh, Simon H.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Carbon flux estimates are sensitive to data source: a comparison of field and lab temperature sensitivity data

Abstract A large literature exists on mechanisms driving soil production of the greenhouse gases CO 2 and CH 4 . Although it is common knowledge that measurements obtained through field studies vs. laboratory incubations can diverge because of the vastly different conditions of these environments, few studies have systematically examined these patterns. These data are used to parameterize and benchmark ecosystem- to global-scale models, which are then susceptible to the biases of the source data. Here, we examine how greenhouse gas measurements may be influenced by whether the measurement/incubation was conducted in the field vs. laboratory, focusing on CO 2 and CH 4 measurements. We use Q 10 of greenhouse gas flux (temperature sensitivity) for our analyses because this metric is commonly used in biological and Earth system sciences and is an important parameter in many modeling frameworks. We predicted that laboratory measurements would be less variable, but also less representative of true field conditions. However, there was greater variability in the Q 10 values calculated from lab-based measurements of CO 2 fluxes, because lab experiments explore extremes rarely seen in situ , and reflect the physical and chemical disturbances occurring during sampling, transport, and incubation. Overall, respiration Q 10 values were significantly greater in laboratory incubations (mean = 4.19) than field measurements (mean = 3.05), with strong influences of incubation temperature and climate region/biome. However, this was in part because field measurements typically represent total respiration (Rs), whereas lab incubations typically represent heterotrophic respiration (Rh), making direct comparisons difficult to interpret. Focusing only on Rh-derived Q 10 , these values showed almost identical distributions across laboratory ( n = 1110) and field ( n = 581) experiments, providing strong support for using the former as an experimental proxy for the latter, although we caution that geographic biases in the extant data make this conclusion tentative. Due to a smaller sample size of CH 4 Q 10 data, we were unable to perform a comparable robust analysis, but we expect similar interactions with soil temperature, moisture, and environmental/climatic variables. Our results here suggest the need for more concerted efforts to document and standardize these data, including sample and site metadata.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Microbiome Aggregated Traits and Assembly Are More Sensitive to Soil Management than Diversity

How soil is managed, particularly for agriculture, exerts stresses upon soil microbiomes, resulting in altered community structures and functional states. Understanding how soil microbiomes respond to combined stresses is important for predicting system performance under different land use scenarios, aids in identification of the most environmentally benign managements, and provides insight into how system function can be recovered in degraded soils. We use a long-established field experiment to study the effects of combined chronic (press) disturbance of the magnitude of organic carbon inputs with acute (pulse) effects of physical disturbance by tillage and chemical disturbance due to inorganic fertilization and pesticide application. We show that because of the variety of ways it can be assessed, biodiversity—here based on microbial small subunit rRNA gene phylotypes—does not provide a consistent view of community change. In contrast, aggregated traits associated with soil microbiomes indicate general loss of function, measured as a reduction of average genome lengths, associated with chronic reduction of organic inputs in arable or bare fallow soils and altered growth strategies associated with rRNA operon copy number in prokaryotes, as well as a switch to pathogenicity in fungal communities. In addition, pulse disturbance by soil tillage is associated with an increased influence of stochastic processes upon prokaryote community assembly, but fungicide used in arable soils results in niche assembly of fungal communities compared to untilled grassland. Overall, bacteria, archaea, and fungi do not share a common response to land management change, and estimates of biodiversity do not capture important facets of community adaptation to stresses adequately.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Understanding Soil Microbial Sources of Nitrous Acid and their Effect on Carbon-Nitrogen Cycle Interactions

Descriptions of soil emissions of reactive nitrogen (NO y ) in climate models are underdeveloped or non-existent, due to the fact that details of the mechanisms leading to nitrous acid (HONO) and nitrogen di-oxide (NO 2 ) formation in soil are lacking. This represents a major gap in our understanding of a significant land-atmosphere interaction that prevents us from scaling these processes from the laboratory scale to the ecosystem and global scales. There is a critical need to include these mechanisms into climate models since NO y controls the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere and the lifetime of greenhouse gases and the rate of secondary aerosol formation that directly and indirectly affect climate. The first objective of this proposal is to conduct laboratory and field measurements of NO y fluxes from diverse soil types and determine the mechanism of biogenic NO y formation. The working hypothesis based on preliminary data is that soil HONO and NO 2 is ultimately derived from ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) that are widespread, but whose abundance varies across ecosystems. In the case of NO 2 , reactive oxygen species derived from iron-containing minerals and heterotrophic bacteria drive NO-to-NO 2 conversion. The approach is to link soil fluxes of HONO and NO 2 to AOA, AOB, and other heterotrophs using a combination of laboratory and field experiments, isotopic analysis, and molecular techniques to address how variability in land surfaces and edaphic properties impact emissions. In addition, we will determine the effect of HONO and NO 2 on nitrogen immobilization and the photo-oxidative capacity of soil. The working hypothesis is that HONO uptake in soil will be a source of nitrosonium and hydroxyl radical that will lead to thermal- and photodegradation of soil organic matter to CO 2 and CO, and the incorporation of N in soil organic matter. We will use surface-sensitive mass spectrometry techniques and gas phase detection to study N-immobilization in soil and subsequent enhancements in reactivity that lead to decomposition of organic matter. The results will be used to reduce the uncertainty in projections from the Community Earth System Model (CESM) stemming from inaccurate representations of soil NO y emissions. The proposed research is significant because, in addition to demonstrating new mechanisms of NO y formation and loss, it will be a crucial first step towards modeling the land-atmosphere exchange of HONO and NO 2 in the CESM. Improved model treatment of land-air exchange of NO y is key for understanding feedbacks between human activity and climate, and addressing societal concerns about the fate of N and C emitted to the atmosphere.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Dredged sediments contain potentially beneficial microorganisms for agriculture and little harmful cyanobacteria

Soils worldwide are degrading, raising concerns about our ability to feed the growing global population. Soil amendments that can alleviate degradation are gaining attention. The application of sediments dredged from waterways to agricultural fields has increasing promise as a means for improving degraded soils. However, herbaceous plant species may have difficulty establishing on dredged material because of low nutrient availability, inhibitory levels of toxins, unsuitable moisture conditions and lack of microorganisms capable of ameliorating these characteristics. To counteract these issues, we sought to understand if the use of a cover crop would increase the abundance, diversity and function of beneficial soil microorganisms compared to harmful microorganisms in dredged sediments. We collected soil samples from two 100% dredged sediment plots, one where winter cereal rye (Secale cereal) was grown as a winter cover crop and one left fallow over the winter, followed by traditional corn (Zea mays) planting. We sampled both plots three times during the growing season: before cover crop application, following cover crop application but before corn planting and following final corn harvest. We then used high-throughput sequencing to identify the bacterial and fungal communities present in the samples. Our data show that cover crop application did not alter the microbial community in these plots. However, sampling time decreased species diversity and altered the composition of both fungal and bacterial communities recovered from these plots. Across both plots, microorganisms associated with carbon cycling were more abundant than those associated with harmful effects, including microcystin-producing cyanobacteria, which were an extremely small portion of the overall community. Our work suggests that dredged sediments have the potential to improve soil function through the addition of microorganisms associated with nutrient cycling, but a cover crop is not necessary to incur these benefits.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Conservation management and ecosystem services in midwestern United States agricultural systems

The recognition that agricultural systems provide services beyond food production has motivated federal legislation and associated programs that promote sustainable management and conservation of productive working lands. This study evaluates the ability of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service's (NRCS) Conservation Measurement Tool (CMT), which has been used to determine eligibility for enrollment in the Conservation Stewardship Program, to reflect changes in ecosystem services resulting from the use of conservation management practices on croplands. This work evaluates four macroconcerns or outcomes (soil erosion, soil quality, water quality, and air quality) that are quantified within the tool by comparing CMT scores tabulated according to practices reported by farmers involved in grain producing operations in the US Midwest with soil health measures (dynamic soil properties [DSPs]) determined on 72 Illinois farm fields. Three management practice categories-Conventional, Conservation, and Organic-were evaluated. The CMT identified significant differences among management categories, and scores ranked consistently higher for Organic than Conventional or Conservation systems. Direct analysis of DSPs suggested that there were relatively small differences among soil health indicators measured on farms under varied management; this implies that the CMT might be overemphasizing the influence of selected management practices. The evaluation of multivariate relationships between the practices scored in the CMT and DSPs revealed that soil properties like soil pH and particulate organic matter-carbon (POM-C) can be used to improve the accuracy of the tool. They also show how relationships between questions (practices) and outcomes suggested by DSPs vary among farming categories and suggest this type of practice-based tool should be adapted by embedding factors to scale farming systems or, preferably, by adding questions that better describe important factors (e.g., plant productivity and fertilizer timing, rate, and form of application) and their interactions with other factors known to influence specific outcomes. This work shows how field data describing practices, properties, and outcomes can be used to statistically evaluate and refine conservation scoring tools.

conservation measurement tool↗
NASA NTRS1986

Field spectroscopy of agricultural crops

The development of the full potential of multispectral data acquired from satellites, requires quantitative knowledge, and physical models of the spectral properties of specific earth surface features. Knowledge of the relationships between spectral-radiometric characteristics and important biophysical parameters of agricultural crops and soils can best be obtained by carefully controlled studies of fields or plots. It is important to select plots where data describing the agronomic-biophysical properties of the crop canopies and soil background are attainable, taking into account also the feasibility of frequent timely calibrated spectral measurements. The term 'field spectroscopy' is employed for this research. The present paper is concerned with field research which was sponsored by NASA as part of the AgRISTARS Supporting Research Project. Attention is given to field research objectives, field research instrumentation, measurement procedures, spectral-temporal profile modeling, and the effects of cultural and environmental factors on crop reflectance.

Bauer, M. E.↗
DOE OSTI2024

A Field-Deployable Magnetic Resonance Imaging Rhizotron for Modeling and Enhancing Root Growth and Biogeochemical Function

A collaborative team from Texas A&M AgriLife Research, ABQMR Inc., the Soil Health Institute, the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, and NIST developed low-field magnetic resonance imaging (LF-MRI) instrumentation capable of imaging intact soil-root systems. The system measured root biomass, architecture, 3D mass distribution, and growth rates, providing a non-destructive means to evaluate ideal plant characteristics based on root metrics. It also successfully generated three-dimensional images of soil water content, a key property influencing root growth and exploration. Operating much like an MRI used in a medical setting, the system functioned in field conditions without damaging plants, overcoming the limitations of traditional methods such as trenching, soil coring, and root excavation. Over the course of the project, the team designed and built three functional prototype systems. These prototypes provided new insights into root–water–soil interactions that drive processes such as nutrient uptake, water use, and carbon management. This information contributed to efforts to optimize plants for carbon sequestration without sacrificing economic yield. The project also supported the identification of desirable traits for energy sorghum, including high root growth rates, more vertical root angles, and enhanced drought resilience under water-limiting conditions.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Predicting Water Cycle Characteristics from Percolation Theory and Observational Data

The fate of water and water-soluble toxic wastes in the subsurface is of high importance for many scientific and practical applications. Although solute transport is proportional to water flow rates, theoretical and experimental studies show that heavy-tailed (power-law) solute transport distribution can cause chemical transport retardation, prolonging clean-up time-scales greatly. However, no consensus exists as to the physical basis of such transport laws. In percolation theory, the scaling behavior of such transport rarely relates to specific medium characteristics, but strongly to the dimensionality of the connectivity of the flow paths (for example, two- or three-dimensional, as in fractured-porous media or heterogeneous sediments), as well as to the saturation characteristics (i.e., wetting, drying, and entrapped air). In accordance with the proposed relevance of percolation models of solute transport to environmental clean-up, these predictions also prove relevant to transport-limited chemical weathering and soil formation, where the heavy-tailed distributions slow chemical weathering over time. The predictions of percolation theory have been tested in laboratory and field experiments on reactive solute transport, chemical weathering, and soil formation and found accurate. Recently, this theoretical framework has also been applied to the water partitioning at the Earth’s surface between evapotranspiration, ET, and run-off, Q, known as the water balance. A well-known phenomenological model by Budyko addressed the relationship between the ratio of the actual evapotranspiration (ET) and precipitation, ET/P, versus the aridity index, ET 0 /P, with P being the precipitation and ET 0 being the potential evapotranspiration. Existing work was able to predict the global fractions of P represented by Q and ET through an optimization of plant productivity, in which downward water fluxes affect soil depth, and upward fluxes plant growth. In the present work, based likewise on the concepts of percolation theory, we extend Budyko’s model, and address the partitioning of run-off Q into its surface and subsurface components, as well as the contribution of interception to ET. Using various published data sources on the magnitudes of interception and information regarding the partitioning of Q, we address the variability in ET resulting from these processes. The global success of this prediction demonstrated here provides additional support for the universal applicability of percolation theory for solute transport as well as guidance in predicting the component of subsurface run-off, important for predicting natural flow rates through contaminated aquifers.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

Data from: Legacy effects of land use on soil nitrous oxide emissions in annual crop and perennial grassland ecosystems

Land use conversions into and out of agriculture may influence soil-atmosphere greenhouse gas fluxes for many years. We tested the legacy effects of land use on cumulative soil nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes for five years following conversion of 22 year-old Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grasslands and conventionally tilled agricultural fields (AGR) to continuous no-till corn, switchgrass, and restored prairie. An unconverted CRP field served as a reference. We assessed the labile soil C pool of the upper 10 cm in 2009 (the conversion year) and in 2014 using short-term soil incubations. We also measured in situ soil N2O fluxes biweekly from 2009 through 2014 using static chambers except when soils were frozen. The labile C pool was ~2-fold higher in soils previously in CRP than in those formerly in tilled cropland. Five-year cumulative soil N2O emissions were ~3-fold higher in the corn system on former CRP than on former cropland despite similar fertilization rates (~184 kg N ha-1 yr-1). The lower cumulative emissions from corn on former cropland were similar to emissions from switchgrass that was fertilized less (~57 kg N ha-1 yr-1), regardless of former land use, and lowest emissions were observed from the unfertilized restored prairie and reference systems. Findings support the hypothesis that soil labile carbon levels modulate the response of soil N2O emissions to nitrogen inputs, with soils higher in labile carbon but otherwise similar – in this case reflecting land use history – responding more strongly to added nitrogen.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Environmental factors function as constraints on soil nitrous oxide fluxes in bioenergy feedstock cropping systems

Abstract Nitrous oxide (N 2 O) is a potent greenhouse gas and major component of the net global warming potential of bioenergy feedstock cropping systems. Numerous environmental factors influence soil N 2 O production, making direct correlation difficult to any one factor of N 2 O fluxes under field conditions. We instead employed quantile regression to evaluate whether soil temperature, water‐filled pore space ( WFPS ), and concentrations of soil nitrate ( ) and ammonium ( ) determined upper bounds for soil N 2 O flux magnitudes. We collected data over 6 years from a range of bioenergy feedstock cropping systems including no‐till grain crops, perennial warm‐season grasses, hybrid poplar, and polycultures of tallgrass prairie species each with and without nitrogen (N) addition grown at two sites. The upper bounds for soil N 2 O fluxes had a significant and positive correlation with all four environmental factors, although relatively large fluxes were still possible at minimal values for nearly all factors. The correlation with was generally weaker, suggesting it is less important than in driving large fluxes. Quantile regression slopes were generally lower for unfertilized perennials than for other systems, but this may have resulted from a perpetual state of nitrogen limitation, which prevented other factors from being clear constraints. This framework suggests efforts to reduce concentrations of in the soil may be effective at reducing high‐intensity periods—”hot moments”—of N 2 O production.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗