Talk:Soil carbon sponge

toned down carbon sink sales pitch

This is about a recent edit. I toned it down because, for one, Walter Jehne sees the carbon sink role an accessory to the ecohydrology role of the soil carbon sponge. But beyond that, an over-the-top sales pitch risks misrepresenting the current status of the science: researchers are identifying a growing number of mechanisms that result in the faster release of soil carbon as CO₂, but these naturally occurring processes are not accommodated in Earth System Models (ESMs). This started with Ponomarenko (2000) pointing out that charcoal dominates the SOM in some black soils but there is no way to accommodate that scenario in current models. It picked up steam with Lehmann's 2015 article in Nature debunking the presence of polysaccharides thought to be a sink of resistant soil carbon resulting from humification. A Soil Science Revolution upends plans to fight climate change is a good introduction to the shifting understanding. A lot of folks are playing catchup with these changes. Paleorthid (talk) 21:39, 21 March 2022 (UTC)