Climate change implications of soil temperature in the Mojave Desert, USA

Abstract

Soil temperature plays an important role in physical, biological, and microbiological processes occurring in the soil, but it is rarely reported as an indicator of climate change. A long-term soil temperature database, collected in the Mojave Desert region from 1982–2000, was used to examine the relationship between regional climate change and soil temperature. During this 19-year study period, there was a warming trend in the Mojave Desert region. The soil temperature in this region, measured at 50-cm deep, increased at an average rate of 0.79°C per decade. The temporal changes of soil temperature and those of air temperature were highly correlated. Elevation was the dominating factor that affected the spatiotemporal variations of soil and air temperature.

Keywords

annual mean soil temperature / annual mean air temperature / arid environment / climate change / El Niño–Southern Oscillation / elevation

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the professors and staff at the University of California, Riverside, who helped with this project, including Dr. Lanny Lund, who initiated this project in the early 1980’s; Carl Nilson, who dedicated his efforts to observing the field soil temperature over the last 20 years; Chris Amrhein, Dave Thomason, and Fred Ernst for their assistance in the field and in the laboratory. Recent funding for this work came from the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31200376).

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2013 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg