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Assessment of the redistribution of soil carbon using a new index—a case study in the Haihe River Basin, North China

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Abstract

Soil carbon redistribution is an important process in the terrestrial carbon cycle. This study describes a new index, soil carbon redistribution (SCR) index, that can be used to assess long-term soil carbon redistribution at a large watershed scale. The new index is based on the theoretical preconditions that soil carbon redistribution is mainly controlled by vegetation type, precipitation, topography/slope, and soil carbon concentration. The Haihe River Basin served as an example for this analysis. The SCR index was calculated, and a GIS-based map shows its spatial patterns. The results suggested that soil carbon was usually prone to being carried away from mountainous regions with natural vegetation, while it was prone to deposition in the plain and plateau regions with cultivated vegetation. The methods in the paper offer a tool that can be used to quantify the potential risk where soil carbon is prone to being carried away and deposited in a large watershed.

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Acknowledgments

This study was jointly funded by The Division of Hydrological-ecological Function Zone in the Haihe River Basin project (2012ZX07501002002) and a project known as Climate Change: Carbon Budget and Related Issues of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA0505020401, XDA05050408).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chinese Academy of Meteorological Science, Beijing, 100081, China

    Yuhe Ji & Guangsheng Zhou

  2. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Yuhe Ji

  3. State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China

    Liding Chen & Ranhao Sun

  4. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, 550 Stadium Mall Drive, West Lafayette, IN, 47907-2051, USA

    Linyuan Shang

  5. State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, 100101, China

    Shudong Wang

Authors
  1. Yuhe Ji
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  2. Liding Chen
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  3. Guangsheng Zhou
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  4. Ranhao Sun
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  5. Linyuan Shang
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  6. Shudong Wang
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Correspondence to Liding Chen.

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Ji, Y., Chen, L., Zhou, G. et al. Assessment of the redistribution of soil carbon using a new index—a case study in the Haihe River Basin, North China. Environ Monit Assess 186, 8023–8036 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-014-3985-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-014-3985-1

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