Jeffrey Beem-Miller

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | LBL · Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

Core Ideas Soil mass is the greatest source of uncertainty for C stocks on rocky soils. Coring methods underestimate soil rock fragment content. Hammer coring methods underestimate soil mass. Mass‐based C stock reporting can overcome coring method bias. Rotary corers are a cost‐competitive and less biased alternative to standard corers. Coring met...

The radiocarbon signature of respired CO2 (∆¹⁴C‐CO2) measured in laboratory soil incubations integrates contributions from soil carbon pools with a wide range of ages, making it a powerful model constraint. Incubating archived soils enriched by “bomb‐C” from mid‐20th century nuclear weapons testing would be even more powerful as it would enable us...

Soils contain more carbon than the atmosphere and vegetation combined. An increased flow of carbon from the atmosphere into soil pools could help mitigate anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and climate change. Yet we do not know how quickly soils might respond because the age distribution of soil carbon is uncertain. Here we used 789 radioca...

The magnitude of carbon (C) loss to the atmosphere via microbial decomposition is a function of the amount of C stored in soils, the quality of the organic matter, and physical, chemical, and biological factors that comprise the environment for decomposition. The decomposability of C is commonly assessed by laboratory soil incubation studies that m...

Radiocarbon is a critical constraint on our estimates of the timescales of soil carbon cycling that can aid in identifying mechanisms of carbon stabilization and destabilization and improve the forecast of soil carbon response to management or environmental change. Despite the wealth of soil radiocarbon data that have been reported over the past 75...

Climate and parent material both affect soil C persistence, yet the relative importance of climatic versus mineralogical controls on soil C dynamics remains unclear. To test this, we collected soil samples in 2001, 2009, and 2019 along a combined gradient of parent material (andesite, basalt, granite) and climate (mean annual temperature (MAT): 6.5...

In the age of big data, soil data are more available and richer than ever, but – outside of a few large soil survey resources – they remain largely unusable for informing soil management and understanding Earth system processes beyond the original study. Data science has promised a fully reusable research pipeline where data from past studies are u...

In the age of big data, soil data are more available than ever, but -outside of a few large soil survey resources- remain largely unusable for informing soil management and understanding Earth system processes outside of the original study. Data science has promised a fully reusable research pipeline where data from past studies are used to context...

Understanding the controls on the amount and persistence of soil organic carbon (C) is essential for predicting its sensitivity to global change. The response may depend on whether C is unprotected, isolated within aggregates, or protected from decomposition by mineral associations. Here, we present a global synthesis of the relative influence of e...

The radiocarbon signature of respired CO2 (∆14C-CO2) measured in laboratory soil incubations integrates the contribution of soil carbon pools with distinct intrinsic decomposition rates. ∆14C-CO2 can thus be used to infer transit times of carbon¬—the time between entering and exiting the soil. Incubating archived soils enriched by “bomb-C” from mid...

Abstract. The magnitude of carbon (C) loss to the atmosphere via microbial decomposition is a function of the amount of C stored in soils, the quality of the organic matter, and physical, chemical and biological factors that comprise the environment for decomposition. The decomposability of C is commonly assessed by laboratory soil incubation studi...

A Partial Least Squares (PLS) carbonate (CO3) prediction model was developed for soils throughout the contiguous United States using mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy. Excellent performance was achieved over an extensive geographic and chemical diversity of soils. A single model for all soil types performed very well with a root mean square error of...

The International Soil Radiocarbon Database (ISRaD) is an open-source, community resource intended to improve constraints on global carbon models and provide a centralized repository for soil fraction data, including incubations and interstitial measurements.