Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Response to the Concept paper: ‘What is recalcitrant soil organic matter?’ by Markus Kleber

Response to the Concept paper: ‘What is recalcitrant soil organic matter?’ by Markus Kleber In the accompanying Concept paper, [ 1 ] Markus Kleber has opened an interesting discussion on how the community of soil scientists has confounded the characterisation of soil organic matter (SOM). He clearly demonstrates that different classifications and definitions for recalcitrance are commonly used to characterise SOM, and shows how the different terms ‘recalcitrance’, ‘decomposition’, ‘turnover’, ‘stability’ and ‘SOM quality’ are often confused. The paper of Markus Kleber [ 1 ] is a valuable contribution to the further exploration of this subject; here, we take the opportunity to comment on that paper by elaborating on some of the statements it contains. We whole-heartedly agree with his statement ‘much confusion may be due to the fact that “recalcitrant carbon” is often used as a synonym for “old” carbon, neglecting that old age can be achieved through many other mechanisms than “inherent chemical recalcitrance”’. There is consensus that selective preservation of recalcitrant SOM is not responsible for long-term stabilisation and is not the only mechanism that determines stability of SOM. [ 2 – 4 ] For that reason, it is not surprising that neither a single parameter for recalcitrance appeared to be a suitable predictor for the decomposability in fig. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Environmental Chemistry CSIRO Publishing

Response to the Concept paper: ‘What is recalcitrant soil organic matter?’ by Markus Kleber

Loading next page...
 
/lp/csiro-publishing/response-to-the-concept-paper-what-is-recalcitrant-soil-organic-matter-t1qNRKcJjP

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
CSIRO Publishing
Copyright
CSIRO
ISSN
1448-2517
eISSN
1449-8979
DOI
10.1071/EN10085
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In the accompanying Concept paper, [ 1 ] Markus Kleber has opened an interesting discussion on how the community of soil scientists has confounded the characterisation of soil organic matter (SOM). He clearly demonstrates that different classifications and definitions for recalcitrance are commonly used to characterise SOM, and shows how the different terms ‘recalcitrance’, ‘decomposition’, ‘turnover’, ‘stability’ and ‘SOM quality’ are often confused. The paper of Markus Kleber [ 1 ] is a valuable contribution to the further exploration of this subject; here, we take the opportunity to comment on that paper by elaborating on some of the statements it contains. We whole-heartedly agree with his statement ‘much confusion may be due to the fact that “recalcitrant carbon” is often used as a synonym for “old” carbon, neglecting that old age can be achieved through many other mechanisms than “inherent chemical recalcitrance”’. There is consensus that selective preservation of recalcitrant SOM is not responsible for long-term stabilisation and is not the only mechanism that determines stability of SOM. [ 2 – 4 ] For that reason, it is not surprising that neither a single parameter for recalcitrance appeared to be a suitable predictor for the decomposability in fig.

Journal

Environmental ChemistryCSIRO Publishing

Published: Aug 20, 2010

References