SOC-reactivity analysis for a newly defined class of two-dimensional soil organic carbon dynamics

Abstract

To evaluate changes in the Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) index, one of the key indicators of land degradation neutrality, soil carbon modeling is of primary importance. In literature, the analysis has been focused on the stability characterization of soil carbon steady states and in the calculation of the resilience of the stable equilibria. Neither stability nor resilience, however, provide any information about transient dynamics, and models with highly resilient equilibria can exhibit dramatic transient responses to perturbations. To trace how environmental changes affect the transient dynamics of SOC indicator, we use the concept of generalized reactivity (g-reactivity) to models belonging to two main classes: the first-order, linear and semilinear carbon transfer models and fully nonlinear microbe-explicit models. A novel formulation of a general two-dimensional model allows to deal with different functional forms and to perform a systematic analysis of both stability of soil carbon equilibria and SOC-reactivity. Using temperatures and Net Primary Production (NPP) data of Alta Murgia National Park, the RothC, MOMOS and the fully implicit dynamical planar system are compared in predicting the impact of increased temperatures in the years 2005–2019 on the asymptotic stability of carbon steady states and in increasing the SOC-reactivity.