Advances in Earth Science ›› 2016, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (10): 1021-1031. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2016.10.1021

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

A Review of the Methods and Controls of Soil Weathering Rates

Laiming Huang 1, 2, 4( ), Ming’an Shao 1, 2, 4, Xiaoxu Jia 1, 4, Ganlin Zhang 3, 4   

  1. 1.Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101,China
    2.State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation,Chinese Academy of Sciences & Ministry of Water Resources,Yangling 712100,China
    3.State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
    4.College of Resources and Environment,University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  • Received:2016-07-02 Revised:2016-09-10 Online:2016-10-20 Published:2016-10-20
  • About author:

    First author:Huang Laiming (1984-), male, Anji County, Zhejiang Province, Assistant Professor. Research areas include soil genesis and geochemistry.E-mail:huanglm@igsnrr.ac.cn

  • Supported by:
    Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China “Water cycle processes and their heterogeneities in the critical zone of the Loess Plateau”(No.41571130081);the State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences “Effect of changing soil properties induced by Grain-for-Green project on water cycle in the semi-arid region of Loess Plateau”(No;A314021402-1602)

Laiming Huang, Ming’an Shao, Xiaoxu Jia, Ganlin Zhang. A Review of the Methods and Controls of Soil Weathering Rates[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2016, 31(10): 1021-1031.

The study of soil weathering processes College of Resources and Environment, rates and the associated influencing factors is crucial for understanding of the feedbacks between soil and environment, which will provide a basis for predicting soil behavior and evolution trend in the ecosystem under natural and anthropogenic forcings. This is also important for the effective management of soil resources. This article reviewed the methods for measuring soil weathering rates (including simulating leaching experiment, model calculation, isotope technique, element depletion and geochemical mass balance) and the influencing factors (including climate, organism, parent material, relief, time and human activities). In view of the serious degradation of soil resources, we proposed the challenge and opportunity of the research of soil weathering. The future study should focus on the critical processes, rates and the associated environmental thresholds of soil weathering under varying natural conditions and intensive human perturbations, including the establishment of the quantitative relationship between the weathering rates calculated by different methods, the analysis and interpretation of synergistic effects among multiple influencing factors, and the modeling and prediction of changing tendency of weathering rates under the impacts of both climatic changes and human activities, in order to guide the sustainable management of soil resource and mitigation of global change.

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