NIOO-KNAWMay 22
New publication: #Beech decline reshapes fine #root traits, microbial composition and soil carbon–nutrient cycling. #nutrientcycling #soilcarbon #forestdecline
https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.70346
The-14Dec 1, 2025
56 million years ago, the Earth suddenly heated up – and many plants stopped working properly
#Science #Environment #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #Plants #EarthHistory #CarbonCycle #GlobalWarming #SoilCarbon #CarbonSink #CarbonSequestration #The14
https://the-14.com/56-million-years-ago-the-earth-suddenly-heated-up-and-many-plants-stopped-working-properly/
56 million years ago, the Earth suddenly heated up – and many plants stopped working properly | The-14

New research shows how rapid global warming 56 million years ago caused plants to fail, reducing carbon storage and prolonging Earth’s ancient heatwave.

The-14 Pictures
Pierre Hohmann 🇺🇦Oct 9, 2025

This week’s “AI in Agriculture” 🌱

📖 A study of Universal ODE approaches to predicting soil organic carbon (arXiv, 2025: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24306)

📊 Hybrid Universal ODE model achieved R² ≈ 0.9999 in clean datasets, with moisture, temperature and microbial turnover as dominant SOC drivers.

⚠️ Performance drops with noisy inputs — a key challenge before field use.

✅ Hybrid physics–AI offers interpretable, process-based SOC forecasting for sustainable soil management.

#AIinAg #SoilCarbon

A study of Universal ODE approaches to predicting soil organic carbon

Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) is a foundation of soil health and global climate resilience, yet its prediction remains difficult because of intricate physical, chemical, and biological processes. In this study, we explore a Scientific Machine Learning (SciML) framework built on Universal Differential Equations (UDEs) to forecast SOC dynamics across soil depth and time. UDEs blend mechanistic physics, such as advection diffusion transport, with neural networks that learn nonlinear microbial production and respiration. Using synthetic datasets, we systematically evaluated six experimental cases, progressing from clean, noise free benchmarks to stress tests with high (35%) multiplicative, spatially correlated noise. Our results highlight both the potential and limitations of the approach. In noise free and moderate noise settings, the UDE accurately reconstructed SOC dynamics. In clean terminal profile at 50 years (Case 4) achieved near perfect fidelity, with MSE = 1.6e-5, and R2 = 0.9999. Case 5, with 7% noise, remained robust (MSE = 3.4e-6, R2 = 0.99998), capturing depth wise SOC trends while tolerating realistic measurement uncertainty. In contrast, Case 3 (35% noise at t = 0) showed clear evidence of overfitting: the model reproduced noisy inputs with high accuracy but lost generalization against the clean truth (R2 = 0.94). Case 6 (35% noise at t = 50) collapsed toward overly smooth mean profiles, failing to capture depth wise variability and yielding negative R2, underscoring the limits of standard training under severe uncertainty. These findings suggest that UDEs are well suited for scalable, noise tolerant SOC forecasting, though advancing toward field deployment will require noise aware loss functions, probabilistic modelling, and tighter integration of microbial dynamics.

arXiv.org
ReDATA, University of ArizonaAug 22, 2025
🌱💨 Did you know that more CO₂ in the air doesn’t necessarily mean more carbon stored in soils? Steven W Leavitt, Li Cheng, David G. Williams, Talbot Brooks, Bruce A. Kimball and coresearchers' study found that while new carbon enters, old carbon leaks out, balancing the carbon gain. See their dataset and article at https://doi.org/10.25422/azu.data.19216809 and https://doi.org/10.3390/land11020309. Image: Leavitt et al. (2022). CC BY 4.0 #OpenData #OpenScience #ClimateChange #SoilCarbon #CarbonCycle
CelloMom On CarsAug 19, 2025

"Human activities, such as deforestation and the expansion of agricultural areas, have [caused] large amounts of carbon [to be] released into the atmosphere, contributing substantially to anthropogenic climate change.

A team led by LMU geographer Raphael Ganzenmüller has now calculated that human influence has reduced natural land carbon stocks by a total of 24%—which corresponds to 344 billion metric tons of carbon."

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-human-natural-carbon-stocks.html
#SoilCarbon

Human influence reduces natural land carbon stocks by 24%, study finds

Human activities, such as deforestation and the expansion of agricultural areas, have a massive impact on the natural state of ecosystems. As a result, large amounts of carbon are released into the atmosphere, contributing substantially to anthropogenic climate change.

Phys.org
Show threadBenedikt HaugAug 18, 2025

Paper of the week - week 34:

Lesschen et al., 2021 (Dutch):

De potentie voor koolstofvastlegging in de Nederlandse landbouw

https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/de-potentie-voor-koolstofvastlegging-in-de-nederlandse-landbouw

The report indicates a potential for soil carbon sequestration that is far lower than what commercial certificate sellers (like Klim) are claiming.

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#climatechange #climatechangemitigation #carbonsequestration #agronomy #soilcarbon #soils #agriculture #benediktspapersoftheweek

De potentie voor koolstofvastlegging in de Nederlandse landbouw

Wageningen University & Research
iweinJun 24, 2025

Plants, like grass and food crops, love stable conditions. A farm I'm involved in is doing an experiment with hedgerows and the first graphs are in. Too early to brag, but the results look very much like: hell yeah, hedgerows FTW. This makes me very happy this morning :)

I will have to alert the researcher to #grafiekPolitie before they publish I see ;)

#regenerativeAgriculture #regenerative #biodiversity #soil #SoilCarbon #farming

Rémi CardinaelJun 18, 2025
‪#JustOut Enhancing “4 per 1000” initiative implementation through region-specific agricultural and forestry practices.
An #openaccess paper with colleagues from the Scientific and Technical Committee of the 4p1000 Initiative #soilcarbon
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilad.2025.100057
Journal of Plant EcologyJun 10, 2025

【EDITOR'S CHOICE】
Patterns and mechanisms of belowground carbon responses to changes in #Precipitation💦

#BelowgroundProcesses | #BelowgroundNetPrimaryProductivity | #Nonlinear | #SoilCarbon

https://doi.org/10.1093/jpe/rtae011

Yvonne PerkinsMay 17, 2025

Australian companies and farmers experiment with using crushed basalt on farms instead of fertilisers - with promising results.

I wonder if I could find some crushed basalt for my depleted soil in inner- suburban Melbourne?
#GardeningAU #Melbourne #agriculture #SoilCarbon #fertilizer

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-17/basalt-rock-fertiliser-carbon-trials-queensland/105299634

Crushed basalt used in roads could cut expensive fertiliser bills, trap carbon dioxide

A growing number of scientists believe crushed basalt, a volcanic rock used in roads, could be used as a fertiliser, with trials showing it can improve soil and capture carbon.

ABC News