Spatio-temporal modeling of soil erosion and soil carbon content at the landscape scale in the context of global change
Résumé
The soil erosion and the decrease in soil organic carbon (SOC) content have been identified in
2006 by the European Commission as two of the major threats on European soils. Soil erosion and
SOC are closely related, and their spatial variability and temporal dynamics are strongly affected
by natural and anthropogenic processes occurring at the landscape scale. This study aims to
model simultaneously the soil depth evolution (erosion and accumulation) and the SOC dynamics
at the landscape scale over 100 years. The study area was situated within a complex agricultural
hedgerow landscape (NW France), with varying soil parent material, slopes, soil depth, field size
and land use. We estimated in a previous study the initial depth of soil and SOC stocks. We used a
soil evolution model, coupling a SOC dynamics model based on RothC and a soil erosion and
accumulation model called Landsoil model. We modeled the soil evolutions under two climate
scenarios: a stationary scenario where climate is similar to that observed in the past 30 years, and
a climate change scenario corresponding to the A1B emissions scenario of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. Moreover, different scenarios of land use and farming practices were
applied. We will discuss the combined effects of land use, farming practice and climate on soil
evolution (soil depth and SOC), considering both the general evolution of the soil properties at the
study site scale and their spatial distribution.