Soil organic carbon fractions and storage potential in Finnish arable soils

Abstract

Understanding the factors affecting the total amount and distribution of soil organic carbon (OC) across different functional carbon pools is important to better define the future management of soil OC stocks. The interactions between soil management practices, local physicochemical soil properties and climate are essential for determining the OC content of the soil. Nevertheless, how these factors affect the total amount of OC and its distribution across carbon pools, i.e., more labile particulate (POC) and more stable mineral-associated (MAOC) organic carbon, is only partly known. In this study, we assessed topsoil (0–20 cm) samples from 93 arable farms in the southern half of Finland to determine the total amount of OC, and its distribution in MAOC and POC, along with relevant soil properties (amount of clay and silt, aluminium and iron oxides and pH), climate (precipitation and temperature) and fertilization (mineral versus organic). The fertilization did not affect the total soil carbon content (12–58 g OC kg⁻¹ soil). The share of OC in the MAOC fraction (on average 86% of total OC) was relatively stable across the large range of OC contents and clay contents (2%–68%). We assessed the highest feasible MAOC of the soils with boundary line analyses and their OC saturation state with Hassink's equation (Hassink, 1997). Only soils with the lowest clay content (<10% clay) were assumed to be carbon-saturated, suggesting that most of the studied soils have a capacity to accrue more MAOC. Simple linear regression showed that clay, aluminium and iron oxides explained 9%, 21% and 22% of the variation in MAOC, respectively. Multiple regression analyses including the amount of clay, clay+silt, aluminium and iron oxides, pH, type of fertilization, precipitation and temperature as explanatory variables explained 33%–53% of the variation in OC and MAOC. In all soils, aluminium oxides were important explanatory variable for MAOC, whereas Fe oxides were significant only in soils with higher clay content (>30%). In soils with a low clay content (<30%), pH had added value in explaining MAOC. Altogether, it seems that various climatic, edaphic and soil management-related factors are context-dependently controlling OC and that soil textural information alone is not necessarily an adequate predictor to assess the MAOC saturation state of the soil.