Plant litter chemistry controls coarse-textured soil carbon dynamics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
1. As soils store more carbon (C) than the Earth’s atmosphere and terrestrial biomass together, the balance between soil C uptake in the form of soil organic matter and release as CO2 upon its decomposition is a critical determinant in the global C cycle regulating our planet’s climate. Although plant litter is the predominant source of C fueling both soil C build-up and losses, the issue of how litter chemistry influences this balance remains unresolved. 2. As a contribution to solving that issue, we traced the fate of C during near-complete decomposition of 13C-labelled leaf and root litters from 12 plant species in a coarse-textured soil. We separated the soil organic carbon (SOC) into mineral-associated organic matter (MAOM) and particulate organic matter (POM) pools, and investigated how 14 litter chemical traits affected novel SOC formation and native SOC mineralization (i.e., the priming effect) in these soil fractions. 3. We observed an overall net increase in SOC due to the addition of litter, which was stronger for root than for leaf litters. The presumed stable MAOM-C pool underwent both substantial stabilization and mineralization, whereas the presumably less stable POM-C pool showed substantial stabilization and reduced mineralization. Overall, the initial increase in soil C mineralization was fully counterbalanced by a later decrease in native soil C mineralization. POM-C formation as well as MAOM-C formation and mineralization were positively related to the initial litter lignin concentration and negatively to that of the nitrogen leachates, whereas the opposite was observed for POM-C mineralization. 4. Synthesis. Our results highlight the importance of litter chemical traits for SOC formation, and stabilization, destabilization, and mineralization. In our coarse-textured soil, the amount of MAOM-C did not change despite large C fluxes through this pool. The litter chemical traits that drove these processes differed from those frequently reported for fine-textured soils far from mineral-associated C saturation. To account for these discrepancies, we propose an integrative perspective in which litter quality and soil texture interactively control soil C fluxes by modulating several SOC stabilization and destabilization mechanisms. Irrespective, our results open new critical perspectives for managing soil C pools globally.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".