Abstract
Abstract. High-latitude terrestrial ecosystems are key components in the global carbon (C) cycle. Estimates of global soil organic carbon (SOC), however, do not include updated estimates of SOC storage in permafrost-affected soils or representation of the unique pedogenic processes that affect these soils. The Northern Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database (NCSCD) was developed to quantify the SOC stocks in the circumpolar permafrost region (18.7 × 106 km2). The NCSCD is a polygon-based digital database compiled from harmonized regional soil classification maps in which data on soil order coverage have been linked to pedon data (n = 1778) from the northern permafrost regions to calculate SOC content and mass. In addition, new gridded datasets at different spatial resolutions have been generated to facilitate research applications using the NCSCD (standard raster formats for use in geographic information systems and Network Common Data Form files common for applications in numerical models). This paper describes the compilation of the NCSCD spatial framework, the soil sampling and soil analytical procedures used to derive SOC content in pedons from North America and Eurasia and the formatting of the digital files that are available online. The potential applications and limitations of the NCSCD in spatial analyses are also discussed. The database has the doi:10.5879/ecds/00000001. An open access data portal with all the described GIS-datasets is available online at: http://www.bbcc.su.se/data/ncscd/.
Highlights
High-latitude terrestrial ecosystems are key components in the global carbon (C) cycle (McGuire et al, 2009), and soils in northern permafrost regions store large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) (Schuur et al, 2008)
This paper describes the creation of the Northern Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database (NCSCD) database as a polygon GIS dataset derived from different regional soil maps from around the circumpolar permafrost region (Fig. 1)
Especially in the case of the Russian maps, the map symbols and classification terms had to be translated into English and the soil classification terms had to be converted to the US Soil Taxonomy (Soil Survey Staff, 1999)
Summary
High-latitude terrestrial ecosystems are key components in the global carbon (C) cycle (McGuire et al, 2009), and soils in northern permafrost regions store large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) (Schuur et al, 2008). The NCSCD links 1778 pedons from the northern permafrost regions to several digitized regional/national soil maps to produce a combined circumpolar coverage Together these datasets have been used to quantify SOC storage in the topsoil (0–30 cm depth) and down to a depth of 1 m. Based on this study and others, the review by McGuire et al (2009) provides an estimated range of 1400–1850 Pg C for the combined arctic SOC pool in mineral soils, peatlands, deep alluvial sediments and Yedoma deposits Results from these and other studies focusing on SOC storage in permafrost terrain (see Zimov et al, 2006; Ping et al, 2008a) suggest that estimates of global SOC stocks may underestimate storage in subarctic and arctic ecosystems by a factor of 2 or more. We briefly discuss possibilities and potential limitations to the applications of these open access databases in research
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