Newer
Older
Project: FRactionating soil organic carbon to quantify, map and undErstAnd its persistenCe and Storage
Soil organic carbon (SOC is a keystone for most soil functions and associated soil ecosystem services (e.g., biomass production, flood and erosion mitigation, etc.. SOC is also the main part of the large soil organic matter reservoir feeding soil life with energy and nutrients, and increasing SOC stocks can help mitigate climate change. The SOC reservoir has been strongly depleted by human land-use. Restoring SOC stocks using more sustainable management practices has been suggested as a way to improve soil health while mitigating global warming. Soils contain organic carbon with highly contrasted residence times, ranging from a few hours to millennia. This is due to the complex combination of mechanisms driving its persistence. The different organic matter forms of SOC support different functions in soils. SOC with short residence times is easily metabolized, and sustains soil biological activity, but is rapidly respired as CO2 and lost to the atmosphere. Conversely, persistent SOC with long residence time can lock up C and thus mitigate climate change, but does not fuel biological activity. Our insufficient knowledge of SOC kinetic pools partitioning hampers efforts to estimate soil health, and limits the accuracy of model projections of the fate of the SOC reservoir at all spatial scales.
https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/9/21/2023/soil-9-21-2023.html