TY  - JOUR
AU  - Mörchen, R.
AU  - Lehndorff, E.
AU  - Diaz, F. Arenas
AU  - Moradi, G.
AU  - Bol, R.
AU  - Fuentes, B.
AU  - Klumpp, E.
AU  - Amelung, W.
TI  - Carbon accrual in the Atacama Desert
JO  - Global and planetary change
VL  - 181
SN  - 0921-8181
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
PB  - Elsevier Science
M1  - FZJ-2020-02863
SP  - 102993 -
PY  - 2019
AB  - The Atacama Desert is the oldest and driest desert on Earth, nevertheless traces of life have been observed in several places, accumulating residues of organic matter (OM) in the desert soil. We evaluated to which degree the distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks depends on aridity. We questioned that these OM traces of life preferentially accumulate in topsoil and investigated whether there was also an enrichment of OM in deeper subsoil. We sampled four west-east directed transects with increasing distance to the coast, spanning the Atacama Desert from north to south, plus a hyperarid site at Yungay in the centre of the desert. With a nested sampling design we addressed topsoil heterogeneity at each sampling site (n ≤ 18). For 12 of these sites soil profiles were dug to 0.6–2.0 m depth. The SOC concentrations were determined for each sample by temperature-dependent differentiation of total carbon.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000488666200020
DO  - DOI:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2019.102993
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/878457
ER  -