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Australian Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential, 2023

Created 25/06/2025

Updated 25/06/2025

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Soil is a huge carbon (C) reservoir, but where and how much extra C can be stored is unknown. Here, using 5089 observations, we estimated that the uppermost 30 cm of Australian soil holds 13 Gt (10–18 Gt) of mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC). Using a frontier line analyses, described in Viscarra Rossel et al. (2023), we estimated the maximum amounts of MAOC that Australian soils could store in their current environments, and calculated the MAOC deficit, or C sequestration potential. We propagated the uncertainties from the frontier fitting and mapped the estimates of these values over Australia using machine learning and kriging with external drift (KED). The maps show regions where the soil is more in MAOC deficit and has greater sequestration potential. The modelling shows that the variation over the whole continent is determined mainly by climate, linked to vegetation, and soil mineralogy. We find that the MAOC deficit in Australian soil is 40 Gt (25–60 Gt). The deficit in the vast rangelands is 20.84 Gt (13.97–29.70 Gt) and the deficit in cropping soil is 1.63 Gt (1.12–2.32 Gt). Our findings suggest that the C sequestration potential of Australian soil is limited by climate.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Australian Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential, 2023
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/5c45f545-6ca7-48c9-9544-c976e1aa27e8
Contact Point
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery
r.viscarra-rossel@curtin.edu.au
Reference Period 01/01/2000 - 01/01/2020
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        113.338953078,
        -43.6345972634
      ],
      [
        153.569469029,
        -43.6345972634
      ],
      [
        153.569469029,
        -10.6681857235
      ],
      [
        113.338953078,
        -10.6681857235
      ],
      [
        113.338953078,
        -43.6345972634
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network "Australian Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential, 2023". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/australian-soil-carbon-sequestration-potential-2023