Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Editorial Acknowledgements
- 1 Soil carbon relations: an overview
- 2 Field measurements of soil respiration: principles and constraints, potentials and limitations of different methods
- 3 Experimental design: scaling up in time and space, and its statistical considerations
- 4 Determination of soil carbon stocks and changes
- 5 Litter decomposition: concepts, methods and future perspectives
- 6 Characterization of soil organic matter
- 7 Respiration from roots and the mycorrhizosphere
- 8 Separating autotrophic and heterotrophic components of soil respiration: lessons learned from trenching and related root-exclusion experiments
- 9 Measuring soil microbial parameters relevant for soil carbon fluxes
- 10 Trophic interactions and their implications for soil carbon fluxes
- 11 Semi-empirical modelling of the response of soil respiration to environmental factors in laboratory and field conditions
- 12 Modelling soil carbon dynamics
- 13 The role of soils in the Kyoto Protocol
- 14 Synthesis: emerging issues and challenges for an integrated understanding of soil carbon fluxes
- 15 Appendix: Towards a standardized protocol for the measurement of soil CO2 efflux
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Editorial Acknowledgements
- 1 Soil carbon relations: an overview
- 2 Field measurements of soil respiration: principles and constraints, potentials and limitations of different methods
- 3 Experimental design: scaling up in time and space, and its statistical considerations
- 4 Determination of soil carbon stocks and changes
- 5 Litter decomposition: concepts, methods and future perspectives
- 6 Characterization of soil organic matter
- 7 Respiration from roots and the mycorrhizosphere
- 8 Separating autotrophic and heterotrophic components of soil respiration: lessons learned from trenching and related root-exclusion experiments
- 9 Measuring soil microbial parameters relevant for soil carbon fluxes
- 10 Trophic interactions and their implications for soil carbon fluxes
- 11 Semi-empirical modelling of the response of soil respiration to environmental factors in laboratory and field conditions
- 12 Modelling soil carbon dynamics
- 13 The role of soils in the Kyoto Protocol
- 14 Synthesis: emerging issues and challenges for an integrated understanding of soil carbon fluxes
- 15 Appendix: Towards a standardized protocol for the measurement of soil CO2 efflux
- Index
Summary
Soil has played a major role in human history. The literature of ancient Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Chinese and Indian civilizations highlight the importance given to soil management and soil fertility. John Steinbeck's famous novel, Grapes of Wrath (1939), is one of numerous literary examples describing the dependency of human welfare on soil fertility. Set during the Great Depression Steinbeck focuses on a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their home by the Dust Bowl, droughts, economic turmoil and changes in agriculture practices. Despite this historical and literary context, our scientific understanding of soil and soil-associated processes, particularly the more biotic components, has remained limited. It is only in the last few decades that we have started to understand, in detail, the complex nature of soil biological communities and their environment, and soil biota's functional significance for ecosystem processes. We are now also considerably more aware of the role of soils, and soil biota, in regulating and determining the response of ecosystems to global environmental change.
Excluding carbonate rocks, soils represent the largest terrestrial stock of carbon, holding approximately 1,500 Pg (1015 g) C in the top metre. This is approximately twice the amount held in the atmosphere and thrice the amount held in terrestrial vegetation. Soils, and soil organic carbon in particular, currently receive much attention in terms of the role they can play in mitigating the effects of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and associated global warming.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Soil Carbon DynamicsAn Integrated Methodology, pp. ix - xPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010