Soil Magnetism: From Paleoclimate to Agricultural Applications

Soils and paleosols retain mineral magnetic assemblages whose concentration, grain size and coercivity integrate parent material, weathering, pedogenesis, redox cycling, microbial activity, fire and anthropogenic inputs. Since the 1980s, magnetic susceptibility and remanence have evolved from tools for characterizing ultrafine pedogenic magnetite and maghemite into versatile tracers of paleorainfall, dust flux, erosion, sediment provenance, contamination and soil-landscape development. Advances in magnetic sensing, microscopy, spectroscopy, FORC analysis, magnetic imaging and data science now resolve these signals from individual particles to regional scales. Yet interpretation remains non-unique: lithogenic, pedogenic and anthropogenic components can overlap, and relationships calibrated in one geological or climatic setting may fail elsewhere. This Research Topic will connect process-based soil magnetism with paleoclimate reconstruction and applied monitoring of contemporary landscapes.The goal is to advance soil magnetism from empirical correlation toward transferable, process-based and uncertainty-aware geoscience. We seek studies that determine how iron-bearing minerals form, transform, dissolve, move and interact with organic matter, nutrients and contaminants, and how these processes control magnetic signals under contrasting climates, parent materials, geomorphic settings, land uses and management practices. A central challenge is to separate climatic and pedogenic information from provenance, fire, erosion and pollution effects. Contributions should combine magnetic measurements with independent mineralogical, geochemical, micromorphological, chronological, sedimentological or agronomic evidence; test calibrations across sites and scales; and report detection limits, uncertainty and reproducible protocols. By linking archives of past Earth-surface conditions to present-day monitoring, the collection will establish where magnetic proxies reliably support paleoclimate reconstruction, soil-landscape mapping, erosion and sediment tracing, contamination assessment and agricultural decision-making - and where they do not.We welcome Original Research, Reviews, Mini Reviews, Methods, Data Reports, Perspectives, and Technology and Code articles addressing: (1) lithogenic, pedogenic, biogenic, pyrogenic and anthropogenic magnetic minerals in soils and paleosols; (2) paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental calibration, including rainfall, weathering, dust, redox and fire histories; (3) soil-landscape evolution, Quaternary archives and source-to-sink systems; (4) erosion, sediment provenance and land-degradation monitoring; (5) soil mapping using proximal sensing, geostatistics, machine learning or remote sensing; (6) links between magnetic properties, iron oxides, organic carbon, aggregation, nutrient dynamics, contaminants and land-management outcomes; and (7) field-to-laboratory standardization, interinstrument comparison, reference materials, open datasets and uncertainty analysis. Studies based only on unvalidated susceptibility-property correlations are outside scope. We particularly encourage multi-proxy, multiscale and longitudinal designs, regional syntheses from tropical and underrepresented environments, and contributions that connect fundamental magnetic mineral processes with reproducible geoscientific or agricultural interpretations. Topic editors: Elder Yokoyama, Marcos A.E. Chaparro, Kartika Hajar Kirana Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85696/soil-magnetism-from-paleoclimate-to-agricultural-applications