Preface: Soil processes in cold-climate environments

Abstract

EEAD-CSIC – Department of Soil and Water, Avda Montanana 1005, 50059 Zaragoza, SpainCorrespondence to: M. Oliva (oliva_marc@yahoo.com)1 IntroductionCold environments occupy a vast portion of Earth. Apartfrom polar and subpolar environments, many mountain re-gions and high plateaus are affected by edaphic, ecologicaland geomorphological processes driven by cryogenic pro-cesses. Under the generic consideration of cold climates,very different climate regimes exist. The latitude, altitude,topography, distance to moisture sources, exposure to pre-vailing winds and proximity to high/low-pressure systemscomprise the main characteristics of the cold climate in theseregions. Consequently, there is a wide range of cold-climateregimes with very different characteristics in terms of the in-tensity, duration and persistence of the cold season and mois-ture conditions. However, the general concept of cold is veryrelative and dependent on the topic under study. In the caseof the special issue “Soil processes in cold-climate environ-ments”, the scope is on soil processes in environments af-fected by cold climates where the combination of temper-atures, precipitation and topography allows the existence ofsoils. The wide variety of cold-climate regimes, together withother factors (lithology, orography, aspect), comprises thevery different chemical, physical and thermal processes af-fecting the soils.The influence of cold climates on the soils is reflected inthe thermal regime of the ground, which controls the typol-ogy and processes affecting the soils As a result of the In-ternational Polar Year (2007–2009), there has been a signifi-cant increase in the number of papers focusing on permafrostenvironments. Major interest has been given to the moni-toring of the thermal state of the permafrost in the Arctic(Romanovsky et al., 2010), where the recent warming mayimpact the dense network of settlements and infrastructuresallocated there (Nelson et al., 2002). Despite the complex lo-gistics in Antarctica, there has been an increased effort in cre-ating a network for permafrost monitoring in this continent(Vieira et al., 2010; Bockheim et al., 2013). An exponentialincrease in studies related to permafrost state has also beenobserved in mountain environments, especially from highlypopulated regions (e.g., European Alps) with a major focuson geomorphological hazards (Kaab et al., 2005; Harris etal., 2009). In contrast, there is a significant lack of informa-tion on soil thermal dynamics in seasonal frost environments,with only a few studies focusing on midlatitude mountainranges (e.g., Oliva et al., 2014b).Soil thermal regime has major implications for terrestrialecosystems in cold-climate environments since it comprisesthe physical, hydrological, geomorphological and biologicalprocesses affecting the soils. In this sense, in this special is-sue there is an outstanding example of the major interestsin which soil scientists are working today. A wide range oftopics have been analyzed with six main purposes:– use of paleosols as indicators of environmental and cli-mate change (Bockheim, 2013; Martinez Cortizas etal., 2014; Oliva et al., 2014a);– characterization of physical and chemical properties ofthe soils (Navas et al., 2014; Palazon et al., 2014);– response of the soil properties from fire events (Pereiraet al., 2014; Tsibart et al., 2014);– analysis of the biological and ecological processes insoils, with a focus on the carbon storage in permafrost-affected soils (Abakumov and Mukhametova, 2014;Zubrzycki et al., 2014);– identification of the thermal properties of the activelayer and permafrost (de Pablo et al., 2014; Michel etal., 2014);Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.