Journal
NATURE
Volume 478, Issue 7367, Pages 49-56Publisher
NATURE RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1038/nature10386
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Funding
- European Science Foundation Network MOLTER
- US Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- Division Of Earth Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [0819689] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Globally, soil organic matter (SOM) contains more than three times as much carbon as either the atmosphere or terrestrial vegetation. Yet it remains largely unknown why some SOM persists for millennia whereas other SOM decomposes readily-and this limits our ability to predict how soils will respond to climate change. Recent analytical and experimental advances have demonstrated that molecular structure alone does not control SOM stability: in fact, environmental and biological controls predominate. Here we propose ways to include this understanding in a new generation of experiments and soil carbon models, thereby improving predictions of the SOM response to global warming.
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