What is ISRaD?

ISRaD is an open community repository for soil radiocarbon data.

Our goals are:

  • To improve the use of radiocarbon (carbon-14) as a constraint for understanding the soil carbon cycle

  • To provide a place for researchers to contribute their soil radiocarbon data once published (i.e. datasets with a DOI)

  • To produce tools to make the repository useful

ISRaD has been developed as a collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey Powell Center and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, with support from U.S. Department of Agriculture.

We are continually adding new data and improving our code. Both ISRaD data and code are hosted under version control on Github.

Publications

The database is introduced and described in the following manuscript:

Lawrence, C. R., Beem-Miller, J., Hoyt, A. M., Monroe, G., Sierra, C. A., Stoner, S., Heckman, K., Blankinship, J. C., Crow, S. E., McNicol, G., Trumbore, S., Levine, P. A., Vindušková, O., Todd-Brown, K., Rasmussen, C., Hicks Pries, C. E., Schädel, C., McFarlane, K., Doetterl, S., Hatté, C., He, Y., Treat, C., Harden, J. W., Torn, M. S., Estop-Aragonés, C., Asefaw Berhe, A., Keiluweit, M., Della Rosa Kuhnen, Á., Marin-Spiotta, E., Plante, A. F., Thompson, A., Shi, Z., Schimel, J. P., Vaughn, L. J. S., von Fromm, S. F., and Wagai, R. (2020). An open-source database for the synthesis of soil radiocarbon data: International Soil Radiocarbon Database (ISRaD) version 1.0, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 61–76. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-61-2020.

What People Are Already Doing With ISRaD

Carbon sequestration in the subsoil and the time required to stabilize carbon for climate change mitigation

Sierra, C. A. et al., 2024.
Global Change Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17153.

The authors used the International Soil Radiocarbon Database (ISRaD) to compile and analyze global soil radiocarbon measurements in order to assess patterns and controls of soil carbon turnover across different soil profiles and environmental contexts.

Radiocarbon analysis reveals underestimation of soil organic carbon persistence in new-generation soil models

Brunmayr et al., 2024.
Geosci. Model Dev.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-5961-2024

The authors used the International Soil Radiocarbon Database (ISRaD) to compare observed global soil radiocarbon data with model simulations, evaluating how well models represent soil organic carbon persistence.

Controls and relationships of soil organic carbon abundance and persistence vary across pedo-climatic regions

von Fromm et al., 2024.
Global Change Biology.
https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17320

The authors used the International Soil Radiocarbon Database (ISRaD) to obtain globally distributed soil radiocarbon and organic carbon data, enabling them to investigate how soil carbon abundance and persistence relate across different climates and soil types.

Who we are

Steering committee

The steering committee provides scientific leadership for the project and sets the main goals and vision. The ISRaD steering committe includes:

  • Corey Lawrence

  • Sue Trumbore, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

  • Alison Hoyt, Stanford University

  • Carlos A. Sierra, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

  • Joseph Blankenship, University of Arizona

  • Susan Crow, University of Hawaii

  • Katherine Heckman, US Forest Service

Maintainers

Maintainers are in charge of the integrity of the code. Currently, they are:

  • Carlos Sierra

  • Alison Hoyt

  • Shane Stoner

  • Jeffrey Beem-Miller (R package maintainer)

  • Corey Lawrence

  • Sophie von Fromm

Expert Reviewers

Expert reviewers review all data submitted to ISRaD. Currently, they are:

  • Sophie von Fromm

  • Jeffrey Beem-Miller

  • Katherine Heckman

  • Olga Vinduskova

  • Gavin McNicol

  • Karis MacFarlane

  • Alison Hoyt

  • Shane Stoner

  • Corey Lawrence

  • Ágatha Della Rosa Kuhnen

  • Caitlin Hicks Pries

  • Susan Trumbore

Community

We have a wide community who contribute data and code for the database. We also host an annual workshop in the days leading up to the AGU Fall Meeting.

ISRaD data includes numerous published syntheses (see credits page). The ISRaD database will be regularly ingested into the International Soil Carbon Network.

Getting Involved

To contribute data, please visit the Contribute page.

If you are interested in contributing to the development of the ISRaD R package or website, please contact info.israd@gmail.com or make a pull request to our github repository.

Please report issues (data, code, etc.) by posting to the ISRaD issues page on github.

If you’d like to receive updates on features, workshops, publications, etc. send us an email to join our mailing list.