Biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity as key drivers of ecosystem services provided by soils

Smith, P.; Cotrufo, M. F.; Rumpel, C.; Paustian, K.; Kuikman, P. J.; Elliott, J. A.; McDowell, R.; Griffiths, R. I.; Asakawa, S.; Bustamante, M.; House, J. I.; Sobocká, J.; Harper, R.; Pan, G.; West, P. C.; Gerber, J. S.; Clark, J. M.; Adhya, T.; Scholes, R. J.; Scholes, M. C.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-1-665-2015

Articles | Volume 1, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-1-665-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-1-665-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 1, issue 2

Review article

|

19 Nov 2015

Review article |

| 19 Nov 2015

Biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity as key drivers of ecosystem services provided by soils

P. Smith, M. F. Cotrufo, C. Rumpel, K. Paustian, P. J. Kuikman, J. A. Elliott, R. McDowell, R. I. Griffiths, S. Asakawa, M. Bustamante, J. I. House, J. Sobocká, R. Harper, G. Pan, P. C. West, J. S. Gerber, J. M. Clark, T. Adhya, R. J. Scholes, and M. C. Scholes

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Final revised paper (published on 19 Nov 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 01 Jun 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C273: 'SOIL Discuss-2-537-2015 - peer review', Anonymous Referee #1, 29 Jun 2015
- AC C404: 'Response to Referee 1', Pete Smith, 18 Aug 2015
RC C412: 'Smith et al', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Aug 2015
- AC C423: 'Response to Referee 2', Pete Smith, 06 Sep 2015
AC C424: 'Detailed revisions made in response to Referee 1 and Referee 2 comments', Pete Smith, 06 Sep 2015
RC C540: 'Review of “Biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity as key drivers of ecosystem services provided by soils” by Smith et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 14 Oct 2015

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Revision (20 Oct 2015) by Karsten Kalbitz

Dear authors,
At first I have to apologize for the very long review process. This was mainly caused by quite opposite views of the first two reviewers and therefore I wanted to have an opinion of one of the experts in this field of research and that took even more time.
As indicated by the reviewers / posted comments your paper is a very timely and important piece of work. However, the paper needs a thorough revision before it can be accepted for publication in SOIL. Please incorporate in your revision the very useful comments of the last reviewer. I particularly agree with the first reviewer as well that the “synoptic information is in some cases rather superficial”. That should be a strong selling point of such a review paper.
In some parts, the review is quite superficial with a lot of text book knowledge. You should check the whole manuscript to avoid that and to use the space for a more holistic and profound view on the relationship between biogeochemical cycles, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
The abstract should be completely rewritten. In the second part no substantial information is given for the scientific community.
I am not sure whether the section “C cycling” is needed. It is a very rough summary but is not closely related to the main topic – ecosystem services. The very rough and superficial description of the factors influencing soil C storage goes not far beyond textbook knowledge. You should make a decision which of the factors (most important for ecosystem services) should be elaborated more detailed. For sure, this paper cannot be a review about controls determining the turnover of soil organic matter.
Karsten Kalbitz

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AR by Pete Smith on behalf of the Authors (02 Nov 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (08 Nov 2015) by Karsten Kalbitz

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (09 Nov 2015) by Lily Pereg (deceased) (Executive editor)

AR by Pete Smith on behalf of the Authors (10 Nov 2015) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Soils play a pivotal role in major global biogeochemical cycles (carbon, nutrient, and water), while hosting the largest diversity of organisms on land. Soils deliver fundamental ecosystem services, and management to change a soil process in support of one ecosystem service can affect other services. We provide a critical review of these aspects, and conclude that, although there are knowledge gaps, enough is known improve soils globally, and we suggest actions to start this process.