• TERN Geospatial Catalogue
  •   Search
  •   Map

Australian Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential, 2023

<p>Soil is a huge carbon (C) reservoir, but where and how much extra C can be stored is unknown. Here, using 5089 observations, we estimated that the uppermost 30&nbsp;cm of Australian soil holds 13&nbsp;Gt (10–18&nbsp;Gt) of mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC). Using a frontier line analyses, described in Viscarra Rossel et al. (2023), we estimated the maximum amounts of MAOC that Australian soils could store in their current environments, and calculated the MAOC deficit, or C sequestration potential. We propagated the uncertainties from the frontier fitting and mapped the estimates of these values over Australia using machine learning and kriging with external drift (KED). The maps show regions where the soil is more in MAOC deficit and has greater sequestration potential. The modelling shows that the variation over the whole continent is determined mainly by climate, linked to vegetation, and soil mineralogy. We find that the MAOC deficit in Australian soil is 40&nbsp;Gt (25–60&nbsp;Gt). The deficit in the vast rangelands is 20.84&nbsp;Gt (13.97–29.70&nbsp;Gt) and the deficit in cropping soil is 1.63&nbsp;Gt (1.12–2.32&nbsp;Gt). Our findings suggest that the C sequestration potential of Australian soil is limited by climate.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Creation)
2023-05-01
Date (Publication)
2023-11-23
Date (Revision)
2025-12-10
Edition
1.0

Identifier

Title
DataCite
Code
doi:10.25901/acs7-kr08
Codespace
http://dx.doi.org

Publisher

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Author

Curtin University - Viscarra Rossel, Raphael A. ()
Kent Street, Bentley, Western Australia, 6102, Australia
Bentley
Western Australia
6102
Australia
Website
https://www.tern.org.au/

Purpose
The new information on the C sequestration potential of Australian soils help to highlight priority regions for soil management.
Credit
We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Status
Completed

Point of contact

Curtin University - Viscarra Rossel, Raphael A. ()
Kent Street, Bentley, Western Australia, 6102, Australia
Kent Street
Bentley
Western Australia
6102
Australia
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information

Extent

N
S
E
W


Temporal extent

Time period
2000-01-01 2020-01-01
Maintenance and update frequency
As needed
GCMD Science Keywords
  • SOILS
  • ORGANIC CARBON
  • SOIL ORGANIC CARBON (SOC)
ANZSRC Fields of Research
  • Soil sciences
  • Carbon sequestration science
  • Statistical data science
  • Spatial statistics
  • Soil chemistry and soil carbon sequestration (excl. carbon sequestration science)
TERN Parameter Vocabulary
  • soil organic carbon
  • Tonne per Hectare
QUDT Units of Measure
  • Tonne per Hectare
GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
  • 10 km - < 50 km or approximately .09 degree - < .5 degree
GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
  • one off

Resource constraints

Use limitation
The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
File name
88x31.png
File description
CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
File type
png
Linkage
https://w3id.org/tern/static/cc-by/88x31.png

Title
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
Alternate title
CC-BY
Edition
4.0
Website
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints
TERN services are provided on an "as-is" and "as available" basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
Other constraints
Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.

Resource constraints

Classification
Unclassified

Distribution Information

Distribution format

Distributor

Distributor

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly, Queensland, 4068, Australia
Indooroopilly
Queensland
4068
Australia
OnLine resource
soil_carbon_seq

Australian Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential

OnLine resource
Cloud Optimised GeoTIFFs - Australian Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential

OnLine resource
Landscape Data Visualiser - Australian Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential

OnLine resource
ro-crate-metadata.json

Data quality info

Hierarchy level
Dataset
Other
Soil sample analytical data modelled and validated using statistical validation methods that are described in the publication linked to the dataset.
Title
Viscarra Rossel, R. A., Webster, R., Zhang, M., Shen, Z., Dixon, K., Wang, Y.-P., & Walden, L. (2023). How much organic carbon could the soil store? The carbon sequestration potential of Australian soil. Global Change Biology, 30, e17053. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17053
Website
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.17053

Abstract
Viscarra Rossel, R. A., Webster, R., Zhang, M., Shen, Z., Dixon, K., Wang, Y.-P., & Walden, L. (2023). How much organic carbon could the soil store? The carbon sequestration potential of Australian soil. Global Change Biology, 30, e17053. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17053

Report

Result

Statement
Lin's concordance correlation coefficient for the spatial models used to create the maps range between 0.66 to 0.85.

Resource lineage

Statement
See <em>Method Documentation</em> section under <em>Additional information</em> below.
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Title
How much organic carbon could the soil store? The carbon sequestration potential of Australian soil
Website
https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17053

Method documentation

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier
EPSG/EPSG:4326

Reference system type
Geodetic Geographic 2D

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/f3fd2a87-b12e-4459-815f-2ec199387490

Title
TERN GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Point of contact

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Type of resource

Resource scope
Dataset
Metadata linkage
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/f3fd2a87-b12e-4459-815f-2ec199387490

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Date info (Creation)
2023-11-22T00:00:00.000000+00:00
Date info (Revision)
2025-12-10T10:39:56.051968+00:00

Metadata standard

Title
ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
Edition
1

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
Edition
1.0

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
Edition
1.0
Title
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
Date (published)
2021
Edition
1.0

Identifier

Code
10.5281/zenodo.5652221
Website
https://github.com/ternaustralia/TERN-ISO19115/releases/tag/v1.0

 
 

Overviews

thumbnail

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

ANZSRC Fields of Research
Carbon sequestration science Soil chemistry and soil carbon sequestration (excl. carbon sequestration science) Soil sciences Spatial statistics Statistical data science
GCMD Science Keywords
ORGANIC CARBON SOIL ORGANIC CARBON (SOC) SOILS

Provided by

Share on social sites

Access to the portal
Read here the full details and access to the data.

Associated resources

Not available


  •   About
  •   Github
  •