Soil Variability and Biogeochemical Fluxes: Toward a Better Understanding of Soil Processes at the Land Surface

Core Ideas Pattern recognition techniques can help explain biogeochemical flux variability. Dynamic factors and their impact on biogeochemical flux variability need better identification. Controls on biogeochemical fluxes are time and space scale dependent. Soil biogeochemical fluxes in the vadose zone are characterized by a large degree of variability in space and time. This fact leads to the need for the development and application of appropriate methodologies to better understand the high nonlinearity and complex feedback mechanisms responsible for such fluxes. In this sense, there still exists a lack of knowledge in topics such as the scale dependence of the spatial and temporal variability of the controls on soil moisture and biodegradation rates and the dynamic behavior of flow and transport model parameter, and its association with the presence of roots. Knowledge of the variability of biogeochemical fluxes is needed for assorted applications ranging from natural hazards and environmental pollution risk assessment to agricultural production and water resources management. The contributions to this special section epitomize the ongoing effort toward the characterization, quantification, modeling, and understanding of biogeochemical fluxes in the vadose zone at several spatial and temporal scales. The main progress has been the identification of different controls on soil moisture and biodegradation rates depending on the scale of the study as well as the important dependence of the spatial and temporal variability of biogeochemical fluxes on dynamic properties such as vegetation and weather variables.