Abstract
Understanding controls on soil organic carbon (SOC) will be crucial to managing soils for climate change mitigation and food security. Climate exerts an overarching influence on SOC, affecting both carbon (C) inputs to soil and soil physicochemical properties participating in C retention. To test our hypothesis that climate, C inputs, and soil properties would differently affect particulate organic carbon (POC) and mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC), we sampled 16 agricultural sites (n = 124 plots) in the United States, ranging in climate (mean annual precipitation (MAP)—potential evapotranspiration (PET; MAP-PET)), soil pH (5.8–7.9), and soil texture (silt + clay = 13–96%). As MAP-PET increased, soils increased in oxalate-extractable iron (FeO) and aluminum (AlO), decreased in exchangeable calcium (Caex) and magnesium (Mgex), and received greater C inputs. Soil physicochemical properties did not strongly predict POC, confirming the relative independence of this SOC fraction from the soil matrix. In contrast, MAOC was well predicted by combining AlO + [1/2]FeO with Caex + Mgex in a ‘matrix capacity index’, which performed better than individual soil physicochemical properties across all pH levels (r > 0.79). Structural equation modeling indicated a similar total effect of MAP-PET on MAOC and POC, which was mediated by total C inputs and the matrix capacity index for MAOC but not POC. Our results emphasize the need to separately conceptualize controls on MAOC and POC and justify the use of a unified soil matrix capacity index for predicting soil MAOC storage.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the Colorado State University Soil, Water & Plant Testing Laboratory, Cotrufo Soil Innovation Laboratory members, and Jim Ippolito for technical support. Thanks to Matt Liebman and Ilsa Kantola for contributing crop yield data and to Tom Moorman, Michael Thompson, Ala Khaleel, Paul Jasa, Harold van Es, and Michael H. Davis for site access and sampling. Five anonymous reviewers offered feedback that improved the manuscript. Funding for this project was provided by the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Postdoctoral Fellowship to A. E. King (Award 2020-67034-31762). Soils from Kellogg Biological Station were provided with support from the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (Award DE-SC0018409), by the National Science Foundation Long-term Ecological Research Program (DEB 1832042) at the Kellogg Biological Station, and by Michigan State University AgBioResearch.
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National Institute of Food and Agriculture, 2020-67034-31762, Alison King, Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, DE-SC0018409, Directorate for Biological Sciences, DEB 1832042
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Co-author M. Francesca Cotrufo is co-founder of Cquester Analytics, which offers soil fractionation for service. The other authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
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King, A.E., Amsili, J.P., Córdova, S.C. et al. A soil matrix capacity index to predict mineral-associated but not particulate organic carbon across a range of climate and soil pH. Biogeochemistry 165, 1–14 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-023-01066-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-023-01066-3