Shining a Light on How Soil Organic Carbon Behaves at Fine Scales under Long-Term Elevated CO 2 : An 8 Year Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment Study.

Building and protecting soil organic carbon (SOC) are critical to agricultural productivity, soil health, and climate change mitigation. We aim to understand how mechanisms at the organo-mineral interfaces influence SOC persistence in three contrasting soils (Luvisol, Vertisol, and Calcisol) under long-term free air CO 2 enrichment conditions. A continuous wheat-field pea-canola rotation was maintained. For the first time, we provided evidence to a novel notion that persistent SOC is molecularly simple even under elevated CO 2 conditions. We found that the elevated CO 2 condition did not change the total SOC content or C forms compared with the soils under ambient CO 2 as identified by synchrotron-based soft X-ray analyses. Furthermore, synchrotron-based infrared microspectroscopy confirmed a two-dimensional microscale distribution of similar and less diverse C forms in intact microaggregates under long-term elevated CO 2 conditions. Strong correlations between the distribution of C forms and O-H groups of clays can explain the steady state of the total SOC content. However, the correlations between C forms and clay minerals were weakened in the coarse-textured Calcisol under long-term elevated CO 2 . Our findings suggested that we should emphasize identifying management practices that increase the physical protection of SOC instead of increasing complexity of C. Such information is valuable in developing more accurate C prediction models under elevated CO 2 conditions and shift our thinking in developing management practices for maintaining and building SOC for better soil fertility and future environmental sustainability.