DOI: 10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83qx
title: Cropland management impacts on soil organic carbon stock changes in US croplands from 1990 to 2015

description: This geospatial dataset represents soil organic carbon stock changes
 estimated from a counterfactual analysis of climate-smart soil management
 practices that were adopted in U.S. croplands between 1990 and 2015. The
 counterfactual scenarios are relative to historical cropland management
 implemented in the U.S. for the temporal domain of this study. These data
 provide a large-scale overview of the carbon stock changes in US cropland
 agricultural soils associated with conservation tillage, manure
 amendments, cover crops terminated with cultivation, cover crop terminated
 with herbicide, hay and pasture in rotation with annual crops,
 set-aside/Conservation Reserve Program lands. Data were generated using
 the DayCent ecosystem model driven by cropping histories in the USDA
 National Resources Inventory (NRI) and associated agricultural management
 data. The average annual stock change was calculated for each management
 practice to determine the impact. Average rates of annual stock changes on
 a per-hectare basis (averaged from 1990 to 2015) are presented as a
 gridded dataset. Data are in a GeoTIFF format on a 5 km grid.
description: Six grids, one for each counterfactual scenario, are provided as
 GeoTIFF raster data files. Each GeoTIFF file has 627 rows x 967 columns
 with a 5 km resolution. Each grid cell value represents the change in soil
 carbon due to the management practice and is in units of metric tons of
 carbon per hectare per year. The values are averages from 1990 to 2015,
 and a positive value represents an increase in soil C given the management
 practice. Point-level scenario stock differences are
 interpolated to a gridded map product. They were created using an
 interpolation process with an inverse distance weighting spatial method
 that determines each grid cell value using a linear-weighted combination
 of sample points within a threshold distance of 20 km. NRI survey
 locations closer to the cell centroid are given more weight in calculating
 the SOC stock change than points further from the centroid. We required a
 minimum of 5 NRI survey locations within the 20 km threshold to calculate
 a grid cell value; otherwise, the grid cell is set to a fill value of
 -9999. In addition, a mask is used to calculate values in cells where
 cropland should exist based on the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD).
 Rasters are projected in a spatial reference of Albers Equal Area Conic in
 units of meters, with a central meridian at -96 degrees longitude and
 standard parallels at 29.5 and 45.5 degrees latitude. The North American
 1983 Datum is used.  - Upper-Left coordinate: 3312635,
 -2493045 m <br>- Bottom-Right coordinate: 2341955, 177635
 m <br>GeoTIFF Raster File Names:
 1. Each GeoTIFF layer is comprised of 4 different files (.tif,
 .tfw, .tif.aux.xml, .tif.ovr) <br>Counterfactual
 Scenario    GeoTIFF File Figure (see attached JPG file).
 Figure:    Scenario:                  
                                     GeoTIFF File: A.  
   Conservation tillage                                             
 ConsTill_dSOC_MTCpha.tif<br>B.     Manure additions              
                                    ManureAmend_dSOC_MTCphs.tif<br>C.
    Cover crops terminated with herbicide                 
 CovCrop_Herb_dSOC_MTCpha.tif<br>D.    Cover crops terminated with
 tillage                       CovCrop_Cult_dSOC_MTCpha.tif<br>E.  
  Hay/pasture in rotation with crops                        
 HayPast_dSOC_MTCpha.tif<br>F.    Set-aside/CRP land use            
                            CRP_dSOC_MTCpha.tif
description: Any program or image processing software that is compatible with
 GeoTIFF formats (e.g., ArcGIS).