Pedosphere (4): 850--862, 2026
ISSN 1002-0160/CN 32-1315/P
©2026 Soil Science Society of China
Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science Press
| Spatial distribution and drivers of soil organic carbon in croplands of Morocco |
Mohamed BAYAD1 , Bruno GERARD1, Abdelghani CHEHBOUNI1, Malcolm J. HAWKESFORD2, Henry W. CHAU3, Moussa BOURAY1, Abdellah HAMMA1, Manal EL AKROUCHI4, Asim BISWAS5 |
1 College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, University Mohammed VI Polytechnic, Benguerir 43150 (Morocco);
2 Sustainable Soils and Crops Department, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden AL5 2JQ (UK);
3 Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge T1J 4B1 (Canada);
4 School of Collective Intelligence, University Mohammed VI Polytechnic, Rabat 11103 (Morocco);
5 School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph N1G 2W1 (Canada) |
| Corresponding Author:Mohamed BAYAD |
| ABSTRACT |
| Soil organic carbon (SOC), a critical component of soil organic matter, plays a vital role in enhancing soil productivity, ensuring soil stability, and mitigating carbon dioxide emissions. Climate, mineralogy, and vegetation-derived factors may each contribute to the cycling of SOC, but whether its distribution varies predictably in Mediterranean arid croplands remains ambiguous. In a spatiotemporal machine learning framework, a multi-year dataset of topsoil SOC contents from over 31 000 cropland sites in Morocco was matched with corresponding environmental covariates, including climate, vegetation, topography, and soil properties. The spatiotemporal dataset was used for model training and cross-validation, while model extrapolations estimated SOC spatiotemporal changes between 2000 and 2020 at a 250-m ground resolution. The aim was to assess the environmental drivers influencing the spatiotemporal changes of SOC contents in these croplands. Measured topsoil SOC contents showed a low median (11.71 g kg-1) with high variability (lower and upper quartiles of 8.46 and 16.24 g kg-1, respectively) across the studied soils. Fifty-seven percent of the variance in SOC content was explained by a suite of bioclimatic proxies related to temperature, vegetation, and precipitation, with temperature seasonality and annual mean temperature having the highest impact. Collectively, the national carbon dataset supports a new basis for understanding the local drivers of SOC gains and losses in arid croplands of Morocco. This will partly address the controversy concerning carbon cycling in arid soils and responses to climate change. |
| Key Words: bioclimatic factors,carbon sequestration,machine learning,precipitation,remote sensing,temperature,topography,vegetation |
| Citation: Bayad M, Gerard B, Chehbouni A, Hawkesford M J, Chau H W, Bouray M, Hamma A, El Akrouchi M, Biswas A. 2026. Spatial distribution and drivers of soil organic carbon in croplands of Morocco. Pedosphere. 36(4): 850-862. |
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