1000 Soils Digs Up Data on Belowground Ecosystems

The bulk of the world’s carbon is stored in soils. That means there’s more carbon underground than in forests and in the Earth’s atmosphere, combined.

With this knowledge, scientists are determined to slow the decomposition of soil carbon, which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide.

“Soils have the tremendous potential to influence climate, making understanding belowground ecosystems important to how carbon is cycled and released into the atmosphere,” said Emily Graham, an Earth scientist at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a Department of Energy user facility.

In an effort to advance knowledge around soils and carbon cycling, Graham is leading a research pilot called 1000 Soils. This pilot is pioneering the development of a global, standardized database of molecular-level data from belowground ecosystems from across North America. When it’s finished later this year, the database will be widely available to the scientific community. This first-of-a-kind database will enable scientists to understand the processes that govern soil carbon storage across diverse ecosystems, disturbances like fire and drought, and land uses including agricultural fields and urban settings.

"Because of its reach and the use of standardized sampling and analysis procedures—in combination with rich metadata recorded at collection sites—the 1000 Soils pilot and its successor programs will provide an unprecedented ability to follow nuanced responses of soil ecosystems to climate change,” according to John Bargar, lead scientist of EMSL's Environmental Transformations and Interactions science area.

MONet

1000 Soils is a component of EMSL’s Molecular Observation Network (MONet) strategic objective to develop a national network of environmental sampling and sensing sites. MONet is designed to enable the Biological and Environmental Research community to produce comprehensive molecular-level information on the composition and structure of soil, water, and resident microbial communities needed to advance multiscale models of Earth systems.

The objective of MONet is to improve prediction of ecosystem function and response to disturbances, supporting DOE’s goal to make scientifically informed decisions about the nation’s energy and environmental security and sustainability. 

MONet will include an array of research over the next five years, including the automation of organic matter and soil analysis; the development and deployment of sensors focused on interactions between the soil microbiome and plant root structures; and multiscale modeling.

1000 Soils Cores and Measurements

Through 1000 Soils, Graham and a team of EMSL researchers are working with collaborators to gather soil cores from important types of ecosystems, including urban, agricultural, prairies, forests, and deserts. The research pilot is sending out kits to collaborators across North America, including the EMSL user community, academic institutions, and other federally funded researchers, to collect core samples and then ship them back to EMSL for analysis. Using consistent collection, sampling, and analytical procedures gives the 1000 Soils team the opportunity to create a standardized database, said EMSL Earth scientist Montana Smith. The high-resolution measurements allow data to be gathered on soil pore network structure, soil organic matter composition, and soil chemistry. These datasets will help researchers understand carbon cycling and soils. Archived soils will be further analyzed through the EMSL User Program.

Partners

So far, 20 cores have been shipped to EMSL from collaborators, which include academic institutions and federal partners like the National Ecological Observatory Network and the Critical Zone Network.

Another 60 cores are expected to be collected by July. Individual researchers can request inclusion through a submission process.

Among the cores being sampled are soils from the reservation lands belonging to the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Warm Springs generously made the soils available for collection and study by researchers from Washington State University (WSU) Vancouver, said Kevan Moffett, an associate professor in the School of the Environment. The tribes have a vast amount of ancestral knowledge on forests affected by changing climate and wildfire. At WSU, Moffett works with Stephanie Porter, Tanya Cheeke, and Brittany LeTendre, who are spearheading a related greenhouse study on the role of plant–soil interactions in forest regeneration post-fire. Moffett’s lab provides field and mapping support and supplementary soil physical and hydraulic measurements.

“The Tribes are graciously enabling us to compare soils from essentially the same stand of Cascades coniferous forest, but which span three sites that have been unburned or impacted by up to three recent overlapping and severe wildfires,” Moffett said. “This is an important opportunity because sites thrice severely burned in the last 20 years are as yet fairly rare and hardly studied, but fire frequency and severity are increasing throughout the Western United States. Whether the contemporary ecosystems are resilient to such intensifying fire impacts is yet to be determined.”

The soil samples Moffett collected are linked to a greenhouse study at WSU to assay how the microbiome in burned versus unburned soils might impede or facilitate the relative vitality of two of the dominant plants in the area, grand fir (Abies grandis) and a woody shrub (Ceanothus velutinus), and thus contribute to post-fire forest regeneration or replacement through shrubs.

Moffett will work with Graham, postdoctoral research associate Maggie Bowman, and materials scientist Tamas Varga at EMSL to better understand the genetic content, carbon content, and structure of these soils.

Porter, an associate professor in WSU Vancouver’s School of Biological Sciences, notes that 1000 Soils provides researchers with the unique opportunity to gain a “rich, cutting-edge understanding of how repeated wildfires affect soils.”

“Our collaboration with 1000 Soils has revealed the tremendous power of layering multiple powerful techniques to quantify physical, chemical, and biological attributes of soils to provide a comprehensive and integrative understanding of the impacts of fire on forest soils,” said Porter. “I never imagined this level of detailed understanding would be possible!”