Spatial evaluation of the soils capacity and condition to store carbon across Australia

The soil security concept has been put forward to maintain and improve soil resources inter alia to provide food, clean water, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to protect ecosystems. A provisional framework suggested indicators for the soil security dimensions, and a methodology to achieve a quantification. In this study, we illustrate the framework for the function soil carbon storage and the two dimensions of soil capacity and soil condition. The methodology consists of (i) the selection and quantification of a small set of soil indicators for capacity and condition, (ii) the transformation of indicator values to unitless utility values via expert-generated utility graphs, and (iii) a two-level aggregation of the utility values by soil profile and by dimension. For capacity, we used a set of three indicators: total organic and inorganic carbon content and mineral associated organic carbon in the fine fraction (MAOC) estimated via their reference value using existing maps of pedogenons and current landuse to identify areas of remnant genosoils (total organic and inorganic carbon) and the 90th percentile for MAOC. For condition we used the same set of indicators, but this time using the estimated current value and comparing with their reference-state values (calculated for capacity). The methodology was applied to the whole of Australia at a spatial resolution of 90 m × 90 m. The results show that the unitless indicator values supporting the function varied greatly in Australia. Aggregation of the indicators into the two dimensions of capacity and condition revealed that most of Australia has a relatively low capacity to support the function, but that most soils are in a generally good condition relative to that capacity, with some exceptions in agricultural areas, although more sampling of the remnant genosoils is required for corroboration and improvement. The maps of capacity and condition may serve as a basis to estimate a spatially-explicit local index of Australia’s soil resilience to the threat of decarbonization. •Methodology based on the soil security assessment framework.•Quantification of the capacity and condition of the soil to store carbon.•Spatial estimation of the utility to support carbon storage for three indicators.•Australia has low capacity, but overall good condition to store carbon.•Intensive up-to-date sampling is required to corroborate the results.