Phosphorus in agricultural soils: drivers of its distribution at the global scale
2017
Ringeval, Bruno | Augusto, Laurent | Monod, Herve | van Apeldoorn, Dirk | Bouwman, Lex | Yang, Xiaojuan | Achat, David | Chini, Louise | van Oost, Kristof | Guenet, Bertrand | Wang, Rong | Decharme, Bertrand | Nesme, Thomas | Pellerin, Sylvain, S. | Interactions Sol Plante Atmosphère (UMR ISPA) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Sciences Agronomiques de Bordeaux-Aquitaine (Bordeaux Sciences Agro) | Mathématiques et Informatique Appliquées du Génome à l'Environnement [Jouy-En-Josas] (MaIAGE) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) | Universiteit Utrecht / Utrecht University [Utrecht] | Oak Ridge National Laboratory [Oak Ridge] (ORNL) ; UT-Battelle, LLC | Department of Geographical Sciences ; University of Maryland [College Park] (UMD) ; University System of Maryland-University System of Maryland | Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette] (LSCE) ; Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Direction de Recherche Fondamentale (CEA) (DRF (CEA)) ; Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) | Modélisation des Surfaces et Interfaces Continentales (MOSAIC) ; Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette] (LSCE) ; Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Direction de Recherche Fondamentale (CEA) (DRF (CEA)) ; Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Direction de Recherche Fondamentale (CEA) (DRF (CEA)) ; Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) | Peking University [Beijing] | Centre national de recherches météorologiques (CNRM) ; Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse (Comue de Toulouse)-Météo-France
International audience
Show more [+] Less [-]English. Phosphorus (P) availability in soils limits crop yields in many regions of the World, while excess of soil P triggers aquatic eutrophication in other regions. Numerous processes drive the global spatial distribution of P in agricultural soils, but their relative roles remain unclear. Here, we combined several global data sets describing these drivers with a soil P dynamics model to simulate the distribution of P in agricultural soils and to assess the contributions of the different drivers at the global scale. We analysed both the labile inorganic P (P ILAB), a proxy of the pool involved in plant nutrition and the total soil P (P TOT). We found that the soil biogeochemical background corresponding to P inherited from natural soils at the conversion to agriculture (BIOG) and farming practices (FARM) were the main drivers of the spatial variability in cropland soil P content but that their contribution varied between P TOT vs. P ILAB. When the spatial variability was computed between grid cells at half-degree resolution, we found that almost all of the P TOT spatial variability could be explained by BIOG, while BIOG and FARM explained 38% and 63% of P ILAB spatial variability, respectively. Our work also showed that the driver contribution was sensitive to the spatial scale characterizing the variability (grid cell vs. continent) and to the region of interest (global vs. tropics for instance). In particular, the heterogeneity of farming practices between continents was large enough to make FARM contribute to the variability in P TOT at that scale. We thus demonstrated how the different drivers were combined to explain the global distribution of agricultural soil P. Our study is also a promising approach to investigate the potential effect of P as a limiting factor for agroecosystems at the global scale.
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