Soil organic carbon, SOC

Soil contributes to a greater extent to total carbon storage than do above-ground vegetation in most forests (Johnson and Curtis 2001). The total amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) in the upper meter of soil is about 1500 x 1015 g C (Eswaran et al. 1993 Batjes 1996), and the global atmospheric pool of CO2 is about 750 x 1015 g C (Harden et al. 1992). The CO2 emission from soil into atmosphere is about 68.0-76.5 1015 g C per year, and this is more than 10 times the CO2 released from fossil fuel combustion (Raich and Potter 1995). Variations in SOC pools and SOM turnover rates, therefore, exert substantial impacts on the carbon cycles of terrestrial ecosystems in terms of carbon sequestration in soil and CO2 emission from soil. 

Declining amounts of arable land, increasing world populations, and increasing costs of fertilizer and food and energy needs will make it increasingly difficult to maintain our soil resources. A key component for sustaining soil productivity is the maintenance of soil organic carbon (SOC). SOC maintenance requires the amount of carbon added to the system to equal the amount of relic carbon mineralized... 

The weight of ash-free humic acid was derived from 10 g air-dry soil, therefore should be multiplied by 10 to convert to percent air-dry soil and further converted to percentage oven-dry soil. The fulvic and humic acid content may be expressed as a percentage of total soil organic matter, which is quantified as soil organic carbon (SOC). SOC is conveniently determined from the loss on ignition, where the correlation is ... 

Figure 2.1. Diagram of factors controlling the main inputs and outputs of soil carbon, superimposed over a global map of soil organic carbon stocks. DOC, POC, and DIC stand for dissolved organic C, particulate organic C, and dissolved inorganic C, respectively. The background soil organic carbon (SOC) map (Miller Projection 1 100,000,000). See color insert. Reprinted from Davidson, E. A., and Janssens, I. A. (2006). Temperature sensitivity of soil carbon decomposition and feedbacks to climate change. Nature 440,165-173, with permission from Macmillan.

The Amazon contains the largest expanse of native tropical ecosystems and has a direct influence on global biogeochemical cycles, especially the C cycle. The C stored in phytomass is of importance because of its quantity and its potential to be released easily. Carbon in soil is proved to be important because soil organic carbon (SOC) is... 

Given that soils only contain a few percent OM by mass, direct measurement of SOM mass loss is much more difficult than for litter studies. The four most common techniques for measuring soil organic carbon (SOC) turnover are (1) laboratory incubations (2) in situ soil respiration measurements (3) stable isotope measurements and (4) radiocarbon methods. We will introduce the basic methodology and highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses of each of these four techniques. For much more detailed discussions of these methods, see the references cited within. 

Estimates of the size of the global soil organic carbon (SOC) pool have ranged between 700 Pg (Bolin, 1970) and 2946 Pg (Bohn, 1976), with a value of around 1500 Gt now generally accepted as the most appropriate (Table 1). This value is considered to be between one-half (e.g., Townsend et ah, 1995) and two-thirds (e.g., Trumbore et ai, 1996) of the total terrestrial carbon pool. 

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