Soils play a major role in provisioning key ecosystem services, including nutrient supply, organic matter (OM) storage, and regulating global trace gas biogeochemistry. Better constraints on the cross-scale mechanisms that regulate soil OM and nutrient dynamics are needed to improve understanding and provide insights into OM persistence and vulnerability. 

This session will focus on empirical, synthesis, and modeling studies that address the mechanisms of stabilization and change in soils, including but not limited to: soil OM storage capacity, ages and transit times; soil OM molecular composition, pools, and fluxes; interactions among soil OM, nutrients, and metals; mechanisms of soil OM protection and stabilization/destabilization (including new methods to measure and monitor change); and soil vulnerability or resilience to stress and disturbance. Studies involving manipulation experiments, long-term or large-scale data collection or synthesis, novel applications of artificial intelligence or machine learning techniques, and data-model integration are strongly encouraged.

• GC - Global Environmental Change