A process-based modeling of soil organic matter physical properties for land surface models – Part 1: Soil mixture theory

Decharme, Bertrand

doi:10.5194/gmd-18-9349-2025

Articles | Volume 18, issue 23

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-9349-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The externalised surface model SURFEX

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-9349-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 23

Development and technical paper

|

02 Dec 2025

Development and technical paper |

| 02 Dec 2025

A process-based modeling of soil organic matter physical properties for land surface models – Part 1: Soil mixture theory

Bertrand Decharme

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-9349-2025-supplement

Data sets

SoilKsatDB: global compilation of soil saturated hydraulic conductivity measurements for geoscience applications (v0.3) S. Gupta et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4541586

Model code and software

Supporting information for the study "A process-based modeling of soil organic matter physical properties for land surface models - Part 1: Soil mixture theory" [Data set]. Zenodo. B. Decharme https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15837794

Short summary

This study resolves a key inconsistency in how Earth system models represent the physical properties of soil organic matter in land surface models. It introduces a new method to compute its volumetric fraction and physical effects using standard input data and soil mixture theory. Validated with experimental mixtures and field observations, the proposed framework improves the physical realism of soil property estimates.