Faculty Exploratory Research Grants
Impact of Climate Variability on Soil Biogeochemistry Across a Semiarid Environmental Gradient in Saguaro National Park
Craig Rasmussen, Assistant Professor, Soil, Water and Environmental Science
Grant: $10,000
In order to model soil and ecosystem response to climate change, we must first quantify the effect of current climate conditions on soil processes. Mountain ranges of the desert Southwest present an ideal setting to examine the effect of climate on soil development and ecosystem function because they compress extreme environmental gradients over relatively short distances. This project proposes to provide a multi-scale characterization of soil physical and geochemical properties across a semiarid environmental gradient in Saguaro National Park East, termed the Sonoran Desert Environmental Gradient (SDEG). A study of processes controlling soil development across the SDEG will have local and regional importance as elevation-controlled climate gradients are a key feature controlling soil and vegetation distribution in the Sonoran Desert. The SDEG serves as a semiarid end-member in the Critical Zone Exploration Network, an international network of environmental observatories aimed at understanding Critical Zone processes, and also serves as the Arizona node of a western regional network of long-term soil monitoring stations sponsored by the USDA. As such, the SDEG leverages support from multiple sources and therefore will broaden the impact of research results obtained at these sites. The ISPE-supported work represents the initial phase of soil and geochemical characterization, with direct measures of soil depth, and chemical and physical denudation at a targeted subset of stable landscape positions across the SDEG. Soils across the SDEG may serve as spatial analogues to climate change, coupling measures of environmental controls and soil development.
Results from ISPE-funded research have led to the submittal of a proposal, with Co-PI Jon Chorover, to the Geobiology and Low-Temperature Geochemistry Program within the Division of Earth Sciences at the National Science Foundation. The proposal is titled “Quantifying Controls of Regolith Development across the Sonoran Desert Environmental Gradient: A Semiarid Node of the Critical Zone Exploration Network.”
In addition, one manuscript is in preparation pending ISPE-sponsored results for terrestrial in situ cosmogenic nuclide analyses across the SDEG that will quantify the relative control of physical and chemical denudation over soil and regolith development across the gradient.
In This Section
- Paul Blowers
Global Warming Potentials for Degradation Byproducts in the Atmosphere - Ed de Steiguer
Development of a Database and Website for State-Level Global Change Policy - Craig Rasmussen
Impact of Climate Variability on Soil Biogeochemistry Across a Semiarid Environmental Gradient in Saguaro National Park - Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman
Developing an Urban Ecosystem Research Program in Tucson, AZ: Monitoring N-deposition and Ecosystem Health - Thomas Swetnam
Effects of Climate Variability on Fire Regimes in Mountains of the Great Basin, AD 1700 to Present