Recent  

Storing C in subsurface soils can help mitigate climate change, but this requires a better understanding of subsurface C dynamics. We investigated changes in subsurface C storage after 25 years under a combination of compost, cover crops (WCC), and mineral fertilizer, and found a potential WCC – compost interaction. Pores from WCC roots facilitate subsurface C and nutrient transport, increasing C stocks and demonstrating the potential for subsurface carbon storage in tilled agricultural systems.

Transfer of organic carbon from topsoil to deeper horizons and to water table is little documented, especially in equatorial environments despite high primary productivity of the evergreen forest. Using column experiments with podzol soil and percolating solution sampled in an Amazonian podzol area, we showed how C-rich Bh horizon plays a major role on natural organic matter transfer and Si, Fe, Al mobility after a kaolinitic layer transition, thus giving insight in genesis of tropical podzol.

Land-use changes are an important anthropogenic perturbation that can cause soil degradation, but the impacts of land conversion from growing cereals to vegetables have received little attention. Using a combination of soil analyses from paired sites and data from farmers surveys, we found significant soil degradation in intensive vegetable cropping which converted by paddy rice-oilseed rape rotation in southwest China.This study may alert others to the potential land degradation in subtropics.

We use a holistic framework to analyze how agricultural policy in Germany affects the sustainability of soil management. We look at the adequacy of policy targets, objects (i.e. drivers of soil degradation), instruments and assumptions about farmers' behaviour, and the coherence among these four dimensions. We find deficits in each dimension, particularly object and instrument adequacy. Agricultural soil policy in Germany lacks depth and coherence, and the role of biomass demand is neglected.

Mineralogical combinations of aluminous clay and pedogenic Fe oxides revealed significant effects on soil structure and related OC storage. The mineralogical combination resulting in the largest aggregate stability do not better preserved OC during conversion of forests into croplands. Structural changes in the direction of smaller mean weight diameters do not cancel out the stabilizing effect of soil minerals.

We developed the Swiss mid-infrared spectral library and a statistical model collection across 4374 soil samples with reference measurements of 17 properties. Our library incorporates soil from 1094 grid locations and 71 long-term monitoring sites. This work confirms once again that nationwide spectral libraries with diverse soils can reliably feed information to fast chemical diagnosis. Our way of data-driven reduction of the library has accuracy potential for monitoring carbon at plot scale.

Freezing and thawing cycles are an important agent of soil structural transformation during the winter season in the mid-latitudes. This study shoows that it promotes a well-connected pore system, fragments dense soil clods, and hence increased the unsaturated conductivity by a factor of 3. The results are of importance for predicting the structure formation and hydraulic properties of soils in prospect of milder winters due to climate change and thus for farmers' seedbed preparation in spring.

How subsoil microorganisms respond to warming is largely unknown, despite their crucial role in the soil organic carbon cycle. We observed that the subsoil microbial community composition was more responsive to warming compared to the topsoil community composition. Decreased microbial abundance in subsoils as observed in this study might reduce the magnitude of the respiration response over time and a shift in the microbial community will likely affect the cycling of soil organic carbon.

This study assesses the controls on soil respiration and the radiocarbon content in soil developed from geochemically varying parent material in African tropical forests. Using incubation experiments, we found that a combination of factors related to soil fertility and the chemistry of the soil solution, organic matter quality, and soil mineralogy drive soil respiration patterns along the investigated geochemical gradients. Radiocarbon signatures predominantly depend on parent material features.

Pollution of French soils by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) known as carcinogenic pollutants was quantified in this work using an extended dataset of 2154 soils sampled across France. The map of PAHs concentrations in French soils revealed strong trends in regions with heavy industries and around cities. The PAHs signatures indicated the influence of PAHs emissions in Europe during the industrial revolution. Health risks posed by PAHs in soils were low but need to be considered.

Forest soils store carbon and therefore play an important role in mitigating climate change impacts. Yet again, deforestation for farming and grazing purposes has grown rapidly over the last decades. Thus, its impacts on soil erosion and soil quality should be understood in order to adopt sustainable management measures. The results of this study indicated that deforestation can prompt soil loss by multiple orders of magnitude and deteriorate the soil quality in both topsoil and subsoil.