Radiocarbon and Soil Carbon Dynamics

Research over the past several decades has clarified the mechanisms and timescales involved in stabilizing organic matter in soils, but we still lack process-based understanding sufficient for predicting how vulnerable soil carbon (C) is, given climatic or environmental change across a range of soil types and landscapes. Part of the problem is the emphasis on short-term studies and processes that dominate C balance at the point or soil profile scale, whereas other processes that dominate over longer timescales and larger spatial scales may actually be more important for determining the carbon balance of soils in a region. Radiocarbon is one of the only tools to study the dynamics of C in soils on decadal to…