Preliminary Announcement: Workshop to celebrate 2015 International Year of Soil (Understanding Soil’s Resilience and Vulnerability)

The Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG), via the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program Office at the USGCRP, is sponsoring a workshop emerging from the 2015 International Year of Soil theme, Understanding Soil’s Resilience and Vulnerability. We will convene interdisciplinary experts to discuss the capacity for resilience and vulnerability of soil carbon in response to climate change.  We seek to promote greater understanding and predictive capacity of the critical role of soils in generating feedbacks to climate. 

This workshop will help to inform the soils topic in the upcoming second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR-2).  SOCCR-2 will summarize contemporary understanding of carbon stocks, fluxes, and drivers in North America and, as a Special Report of the Sustained Assessment Process, will provide input into the next National Climate Assessment (2018). Questions that will be addressed in SOCCR-2 include how natural processes and human interactions in North America affect the global carbon cycle, how socio-economic trends affect greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and how ecosystems are influenced by and respond to greenhouse gas emissions, management decisions, and concomitant climate effects. In this workshop, we will focus on carbon cycling in the soil ecosystem compartment. 

This invitation-only workshop is expected to be held in Boulder, CO from March 14-16, 2016. For questions, contact any member of the organizing committee below or specifically Melanie Mayes.

Organizing Committee

Melanie Mayes, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Vanessa Bailey, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Julie Jastrow, Argonne National Laboratory

Kate Lajtha, Oregon State University

Gyami Shrestha, US Carbon Cycle Science Program/CCIWG, USGCRP

Margaret Torn, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Nancy Cavallaro (USDA-NIFA)

Dan Stover (DOE)