Life Sciences Commons^™

Soil Organic Carbon Maintenance Requirements And Mineralizatyion Rate Constants: Site Specific Calculations, David Clay, Gregg Carlson, Sharon Clay

Agronomy, Horticulture and Plant Science Faculty Publications

Over the past 100 years numerous studies have been conducted with the goal of quantifying the impact of management on carbon turnover. It is difficult to conduct a mechanistic evaluation of these studies because each study was conducted under unique soil, climatic, and management conditions. Techniques for directly comparing data from unique studies are needed. This paper: 1) demonstrates an approach for calculating SOC maintenance requirements and mineralization rate constants at different landscape positions; and 2) discusses techniques for conducting site- specific experiments and determining site-specific C sequestration potentials.