New uses for old tools

Reviving Holdridge Life Zones in soil carbon persistence research

authored by

Hermann F. Jungkunst, Jan Goepel, Thomas Horvath, Simone Ott, Melanie Brunn

Abstract

Growing evidence suggests that climate classification facilitates the identification of zones that either agree or disagree with processes explaining soil organic carbon (SOC) persistence. Already forty years ago, Post et al. (1982) posited that the strict temperature and precipitation-based classification defining the Holdridge Life Zones (HLZ) provides a descriptive tool to guide our understanding of the heterogeneous distribution of global SOC stocks. Here we argue that this classification has the potential for describing SOC persistence by linking top-down and bottom-up approaches from different scales, which allows selection of individual regional relevancies necessary to manage and track the fate of our largest terrestrial carbon (C) reservoir.

Organisation(s)

Physical Geography Group
Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology

External Organisation(s)

University of Koblenz-Landau
California State University Monterey Bay

Type

Editorial in journal

Journal

Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science

Volume

184

Pages

5-11

No. of pages

7

ISSN

1522-2624

Publication date

02.2021

Publication status

Published

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Soil Science, Plant Science

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 13 - Climate Action

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1002/jpln.202100008 (Access: Open)