Long-term storage of air-dried samples compromises water-extractable organic carbon as a soil health indicator

IF 5.1 2区农林科学 Q1 SOIL SCIENCE

Soil Pub Date : 2026-09-23 DOI:10.5194/soil-12-937-2026

Swarnali Mahmood, Franky Celestin, Diego Arruda Huggins de Sá Leitão, Ryan E. Champiny, Xinlin Wang, JoAnn B. Donald, Audrey Plauche, S. Carolina Córdova, Christine D. Sprunger, Gabriel Maltais-Landry, Yang Lin

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract. The assessment of soil health relies on sensitive indicators to detect management-induced changes, yet the analytical reliability of these indicators following long-term storage is rarely assessed. We investigated how multi-year storage of air-dried samples influenced the concentrations of several common soil health indicators, including water-extractable organic carbon and nitrogen (WEOC, WEN), mineralizable carbon (Cmin), and permanganate-oxidizable carbon (POX-C), using archived samples from a cover crop experiment. Concentrations of WEOC nearly doubled after three years of storage, while WEN decreased by 19 %. A small but significant 6 % increase in Cmin concentration was also observed. In contrast, POX-C concentrations remained stable, indicating robustness to storage effects. These storage effects were consistent among three treatments with different cover crop species. In addition, WEOC concentrations consistently declined over time in this experiment along with four long-term agricultural sites in the USA, but their bulk soil organic carbon (SOC) or soil organic matter (SOM) did not. These results suggest that multi-year storage of air-dried samples inflates the WEOC pool. Therefore, we caution the use of WEOC as a soil health indicator in archived samples, as the observed variations might reflect storage artifacts rather than genuine management impacts.

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风干样品的长期储存损害了作为土壤健康指标的水可提取有机碳

摘要。土壤健康的评估依赖于敏感指标来检测管理引起的变化，但这些指标在长期储存后的分析可靠性很少得到评估。利用覆盖作物试验的存档样品，研究了多年风干样品对几种常见土壤健康指标的影响，包括可水提取有机碳和氮（WEOC， WEN）、可矿化碳（Cmin）和高锰酸盐可氧化碳（POX-C）的浓度。贮藏3年后，WEOC浓度几乎增加了一倍，而WEN浓度下降了19%。还观察到Cmin浓度有6%的小但显著的增加。相比之下，POX-C浓度保持稳定，表明对储存效应的稳受性。这些贮藏效果在不同覆盖作物种类的处理中是一致的。此外，随着时间的推移，美国4个长期农业试验点的WEOC浓度持续下降，但其土壤有机碳（SOC）或土壤有机质（SOM）没有下降。这些结果表明，多年储存的风干样品会使WEOC池膨胀。因此，我们谨慎地使用WEOC作为存档样本中的土壤健康指标，因为观察到的变化可能反映了存储的人为影响，而不是真正的管理影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Soil Agricultural and Biological Sciences-Soil Science

CiteScore

10.80

自引率

2.90%

发文量

审稿时长

30 weeks

期刊介绍： SOIL is an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and discussion of high-quality research in the field of soil system sciences. SOIL is at the interface between the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. SOIL publishes scientific research that contributes to understanding the soil system and its interaction with humans and the entire Earth system. The scope of the journal includes all topics that fall within the study of soil science as a discipline, with an emphasis on studies that integrate soil science with other sciences (hydrology, agronomy, socio-economics, health sciences, atmospheric sciences, etc.).