Repository for the Soil Organic Matter Synthesis working group
Will Wieder and Kate Lajtha
Award Date: September 20, 2017
Soil organic matter is a massive storehouse for carbon, as well as a key regulator of nutrient cycling and soil quality in terrestrial ecosystems, yet ecology lacks a full understanding of the controls on stabilization and breakdown of soil organic matter. Two sets of competing theories underlie models that adequately predict site-specific dynamics, but result in different sets of predictions about the response of soil organic matter to perturbations.