MOSS · Models of Soil Hydraulic Properties with Adjustable Soil Structure and their Application in an Earth-system Model
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-10-01 → 2025-09-30
- EU contribution
- €195,915
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Models of Soil Hydraulic Properties with Adjustable Soil Structure and their Application in an Earth-system Model
Computer models used for predicting the weather or the climate must calculate how much water from rain and snow enters the soil and for how long the water stays close to the surface, where it can evaporate (and thus cool the land surface) or be taken up by plants. To calculate this, land components of weather and climate models require parameters which characterize the soil at a given location. In most land models, these parameters are estimated based on the proportions of small, medium, and large particles that make up the soil, without taking into account how these particles are arranged. Not accounting for soil particle arrangement -- the soil structure -- means that land surface models cannot account for many processes which are known to affect soil parameters, such as biological activity (e.g. earthworms), land management (e.g. tillage, compaction), or wet-dry and freeze-thaw cycles. This potentially makes weather and climate predictions less accurate, and limits the extent to which land models can weigh in on timely issues involving soil biodiversity preservation or agricultural practices with strong impact on the soil. The goal of MOSS was to develop a flexible, physics-based method for accounting for the effects of soil structure on soil parameters, implement the method in a state-of-the-art land surface model, and investigate the impact of soil structure on soil moisture and other land variables.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The spatial arrangement of solids and pore spaces within soil (soil structure) is a major source of variability in the hydraulic properties of soils. It is through changes in soil structure that biological activity, land management, or the passage of time (including wet-dry and freeze-thaw cycles) affect the capacity of soil to retain and conduct moisture. Nevertheless, soil structure is at most tentatively represented in Earth-system models. As a result, we cannot quantify the effect of biological activity and management on soil water content and thus their full effect on the regional climate or the land carbon sink. This represents an important gap in our understanding of the natural environment, as well as a potential blind spot in our response to the climate emergency. Including soil structure in land-surface models is difficult, because its effect on the soil hydraulic properties cannot be reliably predicted based on a single, easy-to-measure quantity such as bulk density. At the same time, more detailed soil structure data and the methods to incorporate it are largely missing. MOSS will address these issues by 1)~developing a physics-based method of incorporating beyond-density soil structure information into the models of soil hydraulic properties, 2)~implementing this method in a state-of-the-art Earth-system model, and 3)~using the new model to quantify the impact of soil structure on the land carbon sink. By doing so, MOSS will likely demonstrate that soil structure must be included in numerical models and protected in the field. Moreover, the method developed by MOSS will be applicable to agronomical and hydrological models and thus will have a plausible impact on the socially and economically important policy decisions these models inform. Finally, because of the interdisciplinary background of the researcher, we expect that the high visibility and copious training program offered by the fellowship will have a defining impact on their scientific career.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101106672
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e50a916ac2&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5217815e4&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union