TY - JOUR
T1 - Wetness controls on global chemical weathering
AU - Calabrese, Salvatore
AU - Porporato, Amilcare
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and AgriLife Research at Texas A&M University; the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project 1023954; the National Science Foundation (NSF), grants EAR-1331846 and FESD-1338694; and the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Texas Data Repository (https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/M2KQW6).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2020/8/31
Y1 - 2020/8/31
N2 - The formation of soils, the evolution of the biosphere, and the CO2 content in the atmosphere are strongly impacted by chemical weathering. Due to its manifold importance for the long-term stability of the Critical Zone, it is crucial to link weathering rates to the environmental conditions affecting it and develop accurate rate laws for landscape evolution and carbon cycle modeling. Here we use the π theorem of dimensional analysis to provide a theoretical framework to global datasets of weathering rates. As a result, a strong relation between chemical depletion, precipitation and potential evapotranspiration synthesizes the primary role of wetness. Based on this finding, we estimate the spatial distribution of chemical depletion fraction and find that, globally, soils are 50% chemically depleted, 61% of the land is in kinetic-limited conditions, while only 1% is supply-limited. The remaining 38% of the land is in a transitional regime and susceptible to changes in wetness.
AB - The formation of soils, the evolution of the biosphere, and the CO2 content in the atmosphere are strongly impacted by chemical weathering. Due to its manifold importance for the long-term stability of the Critical Zone, it is crucial to link weathering rates to the environmental conditions affecting it and develop accurate rate laws for landscape evolution and carbon cycle modeling. Here we use the π theorem of dimensional analysis to provide a theoretical framework to global datasets of weathering rates. As a result, a strong relation between chemical depletion, precipitation and potential evapotranspiration synthesizes the primary role of wetness. Based on this finding, we estimate the spatial distribution of chemical depletion fraction and find that, globally, soils are 50% chemically depleted, 61% of the land is in kinetic-limited conditions, while only 1% is supply-limited. The remaining 38% of the land is in a transitional regime and susceptible to changes in wetness.
KW - Chemical depletion
KW - Chemical weathering
KW - Climate
KW - Dryness index
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U2 - 10.1088/2515-7620/abad7b
DO - 10.1088/2515-7620/abad7b
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107134672
SN - 2515-7620
VL - 2
JO - Environmental Research Communications
JF - Environmental Research Communications
IS - 8
M1 - 085005
ER -