Soil carbon
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SoilGrids 2.0: producing soil information for the globe with quantified spatial uncertainty Open
SoilGrids produces maps of soil properties for the entire globe at medium spatial resolution (250 m cell size) using state-of-the-art machine learning methods to generate the necessary models. It takes as inputs soil observations from abou…
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Quantitative assessment of microbial necromass contribution to soil organic matter Open
Soil carbon transformation and sequestration have received significant interest in recent years due to a growing need for quantitating its role in mitigating climate change. Even though our understanding of the nature of soil organic matte…
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Negative emissions—Part 2: Costs, potentials and side effects Open
The most recent IPCC assessment has shown an important role for negative emissions technologies (NETs) in limiting global warming to 2 °C cost-effectively. However, a bottom-up, systematic, reproducible, and transparent literature assessme…
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Soil carbon debt of 12,000 years of human land use Open
Significance Land use and land cover change has resulted in substantial losses of carbon from soils globally, but credible estimates of how much soil carbon has been lost have been difficult to generate. Using a data-driven statistical mod…
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Hydrologic regulation of plant rooting depth Open
Significance Knowledge of plant rooting depth is critical to understanding plant-mediated global change. Earth system models are highly sensitive to this particular parameter with large consequences for modeled plant productivity, water–en…
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Greenhouse gas emissions from soils—A review Open
Soils act as sources and sinks for greenhouse gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), \nand nitrous oxide (N2O). Since both storage and emission capacities may be large, precise quantifications \nare needed to obtain relia…
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The Ecology of Soil Carbon: Pools, Vulnerabilities, and Biotic and Abiotic Controls Open
Soil organic matter (SOM) anchors global terrestrial productivity and food and fiber supply. SOM retains water and soil nutrients and stores more global carbon than do plants and the atmosphere combined. SOM is also decomposed by microbes,…
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Advanced Modelling of Soil Organic Carbon Content in Coal Mining Areas Using Integrated Spectral Analysis: A Dengcao Coal Mine Case Study Open
Effective modelling and integrated spectral analysis approaches can advance modelling precision. To develop an integrated spectral forecast modelling of soil organic carbon (SOC), this research investigated a mining coal in Dengcao Coal Mi…
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Carbon input by roots into the soil: Quantification of rhizodeposition from root to ecosystem scale Open
Despite its fundamental role for carbon (C) and nutrient cycling, rhizodeposition remains ‘the hidden half of the hidden half ’: it is highly dynamic and rhizodeposits are rapidly incorporated into microorganisms, soil organic matter, and …
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Soil networks become more connected and take up more carbon as nature restoration progresses Open
Soil organisms have an important role in aboveground community dynamics and ecosystem functioning in terrestrial ecosystems. However, most studies have considered soil biota as a black box or focussed on specific groups, whereas little is …
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Long-term pattern and magnitude of soil carbon feedback to the climate system in a warming world Open
Climate and the carbon cycle It is still not clear how global warming will affect the global carbon cycle, either in terms of the magnitude of the effect or even its sign. Help in answering that question will come from long-term field-base…
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Soil health and carbon management Open
Soil, a natural four‐dimensional body at the atmosphere–lithosphere interface, is organic‐carbon‐mediated realm in which solid, liquid, and gaseous phases interact at a range of scales and generate numerous ecosystem goods and services. So…
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How biochar works, and when it doesn't: A review of mechanisms controlling soil and plant responses to biochar Open
We synthesized 20 years of research to explain the interrelated processes that determine soil and plant responses to biochar. The properties of biochar and its effects within agricultural ecosystems largely depend on feedstock and pyrolysi…
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Long‐term nitrogen fertilization decreases bacterial diversity and favors the growth of <i>Actinobacteria</i> and <i>Proteobacteria</i> in agro‐ecosystems across the globe Open
Long‐term elevated nitrogen (N) input from anthropogenic sources may cause soil acidification and decrease crop yield, yet the response of the belowground microbial community to long‐term N input alone or in combination with phosphorus (P)…
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Plant diversity enhances productivity and soil carbon storage Open
Significance Soil carbon sequestration plays an important role in mitigating anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. Recent studies have shown that biodiversity increases soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in experimenta…
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How to measure, report and verify soil carbon change to realize the potential of soil carbon sequestration for atmospheric greenhouse gas removal Open
There is growing international interest in better managing soils to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) content to contribute to climate change mitigation, to enhance resilience to climate change and to underpin food security, through initi…
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Pathways of mineral‐associated soil organic matter formation: Integrating the role of plant carbon source, chemistry, and point of entry Open
To predict the behavior of the terrestrial carbon cycle, it is critical to understand the source, formation pathway, and chemical composition of soil organic matter (SOM). There is emerging consensus that slow‐cycling SOM generally consist…
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Global meta-analysis of the relationship between soil organic matter and crop yields Open
Resilient, productive soils are necessary to sustainably intensify agriculture to increase yields while minimizing environmental harm. To conserve and regenerate productive soils, the need to maintain and build soil organic matter (SOM) ha…
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Grassland management impacts on soil carbon stocks: a new synthesis Open
Grassland ecosystems cover a large portion of Earths’ surface and contain substantial amounts of soil organic carbon. Previous work has established that these soil carbon stocks are sensitive to management and land use changes: grazing, sp…
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Global negative effects of nitrogen deposition on soil microbes Open
Soil microbes comprise a large portion of the genetic diversity on Earth and influence a large number of important ecosystem processes. Increasing atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition represents a major global change driver; however, it is …
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A critical review of the impacts of cover crops on nitrogen leaching, net greenhouse gas balance and crop productivity Open
Cover crops play an increasingly important role in improving soil quality, reducing agricultural inputs and improving environmental sustainability. The main objectives of this critical global review and systematic analysis were to assess c…
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The whole-soil carbon flux in response to warming Open
Warming the top meter increased soil CO 2 production by 37%, with 40% of the response coming from soils more than 15 centimeters deep.
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LUCAS Soil, the largest expandable soil dataset for Europe: a review Open
Summary Soil is a non‐renewable resource that requires constant monitoring to prevent its degradation and promote its sustainable management. The ‘Land Use/Cover Area frame statistical Survey Soil’ (LUCAS Soil) is an extensive and regular …
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Economics- and policy-driven organic carbon input enhancement dominates soil organic carbon accumulation in Chinese croplands Open
Significance Soil organic carbon (C) stock in Chinese croplands increased by about 140 kg C ha −1 year −1 from 1980 to 2011. This soil organic C sequestration was largely due to drastic changes in management practices, such as fertilizatio…
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Microbial regulation of the soil carbon cycle: evidence from gene–enzyme relationships Open
A lack of empirical evidence for the microbial regulation of ecosystem processes, including carbon (C) degradation, hinders our ability to develop a framework to directly incorporate the genetic composition of microbial communities in the …
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Dependence of the evolution of carbon dynamics in the northern permafrost region on the trajectory of climate change Open
Significance We applied regional and global-scale biogeochemical models that coupled thaw depth with soil carbon exposure to evaluate the dependence of the evolution of future carbon storage in the northern permafrost region on the traject…
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Global biogeography of microbial nitrogen-cycling traits in soil Open
Microorganisms drive much of the Earth’s nitrogen (N) cycle, but we still lack a global overview of the abundance and composition of the microorganisms carrying out soil N processes. To address this gap, we characterized the biogeography o…
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Soil moisture–atmosphere feedback dominates land carbon uptake variability Open
Year-to-year changes in carbon uptake by terrestrial ecosystems have an essential role in determining atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations 1 . It remains uncertain to what extent temperature and water availability can explain these va…
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Soil microbial diversity–biomass relationships are driven by soil carbon content across global biomes Open
The relationship between biodiversity and biomass has been a long standing debate in ecology. Soil biodiversity and biomass are essential drivers of ecosystem functions. However, unlike plant communities, little is known about how the dive…
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Carbon storage in US wetlands Open
Wetland soils contain some of the highest stores of soil carbon in the biosphere. However, there is little understanding of the quantity and distribution of carbon stored in our remaining wetlands or of the potential effects of human distu…