Determining the potential for soil carbon storage under different fire regimes in drylands

Soils may contain a vast capacity to sequester carbon and slow climate change when disturbances are managed. I aim to understand
how fire management can impact soil carbon sequestration at the global scale using experimental tests of underlying mechanisms
across a global network of fire experiments, development of process-based models, and implementation into an active carbon-credit
marketplace. Managing fire regimes to promote soil carbon (C) sequestration has the potential to be large, given that fire burns 5% of
the globe annually and areas that burn account for ~70% of global topsoil C. More than 75% of these global fire-driven C emissions
occurs in dryland ecosystems such as savannas, where fires are primarily caused by prescribed burns, not uncontrolled wildfires
observed in forests, offering an opportunity to adjust fire management to sequester C.
We will advance our understanding of how fire impacts soil C to understand the role of climate, plant productivity, and
decomposition in regulating fire effects on soils, and how fire regimes can be managed to maximize soil C storage in drylands. First, I
will systematically survey ecosystem C fluxes and storage across 15 sites that have manipulated fire frequencies for 30-65 years.
Second, I will develop a model of C and nitrogen cycling and compare model outputs with historical models to understand how
changes in soil stability modify fire effects on soils. Finally, I will address the applied topic of nature-based climate solutions to
quantify potential C storage under altered fire management schemes in rangelands. The focus will be on North America because of
the long-term and high-resolution datasets necessary for models and an ongoing collaboration with industry partners that run
carbon credit purchasing programs.
Combined, the three objectives aim to achieve a high-risk but high-reward goal of slowing climate change while supporting
economic development.