Consequence of interaction between soil erosion processes and dryland landforms

Abstract

Soil is directly linked to climate through the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and the pedosphere. Anthropogenic-geomorphic disturbances and accelerated soil erosion processes stimulate spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of soil biotic-abiotic components, causing the activation of positive feedback mechanisms that amplify small deviations and encourage large scale dynamics at the landscape level. Interaction between soil erosion processes and landform characteristics are thought to be the major factors contributing to the emergence of spatial heterogeneity in the biophysical and biochemical mechanisms controlling the linkage between the pedosphere and atmosphere. Dryland landscapes contribute a high proportion of CO2 emissions from soil to the atmosphere due to large‐scale heterogeneity in the distribution of vascular plants and surface concentrations of SOC. Here we reviewed recent contributions to the study of biotic and abiotic drivers of spatial heterogeneity in drylands, and we illustrated a holistic perspective of the interactions among soil erosion processes such as water-wind erosion and dryland landforms characteristics and their impacts on instability in the CO2 concentrations of the atmosphere and, subsequently climate change.