Ecosystem-Scale Modeling of Soil Carbon Dynamics: Time for a Radical Shift of Perspective?

TL;DR: This paper proposes a research agenda for the emerging soil-based carbon economy, highlighting contestations around soil carbon sequestration, carbon farming, and marketization, and identifying five themes to guide future research on governance, power relations, and ecological contexts.

TL;DR: In this article, 14C-labeled glucose was introduced into soil pores of two different size classes (<6 and 6-30 μm neck dia) of a Vertisol, and subsequent comparison of 14C flow at two matric potentials (50 and −10 kPa) enabled an evaluation of the effects of substrate location and pore-water regime on carbon turnover.

TL;DR: The authors here introduce and evaluate the consequences at local and global scale of modifying hydraulic properties of soils in response to biological activity—a process significantly changing soil structure.

TL;DR: The reviewed investigations provide new and quantitative evidence that different soil C pools underlie divergent biological constraints of decomposition, and proposes to direct future research explicitly towards such biologically nonpreferred areas where decomposition rates are slow, orwhere decomposition is frequently interrupted, to assess the potential for long-term preservation of C in the soil.

TL;DR: In this article, a large area in which 161 free-to-swell undisturbed samples were obtained for this research represents a major part of the Swiss agricultural land and belongs to one broad soil group (Cambi-Luvisols).