Temporal and Spatial Dynamics of Soil Carbon Cycling and Its Response to Environmental Change in a Northern Hardwood Forest

The timescales over which soil carbon responds to global change are a major uncertainty in the terrestrial carbon cycle. Radiocarbon measurements on archived soil samples are an important tool for addressing this uncertainty. We present time series (1969–2023) of radiocarbon measurements for litter (Oi/Oe and Oa/A) and mineral (0–10 cm) soils from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, a predominantly hardwood forest in the northeastern USA. To estimate soil carbon cycling rates, we built different autonomous linear compartmental models. We found that soil litter carbon cycles on decadal timescales (Oi/Oe: ~7 years), whereas carbon at the organic-mineral interface (Oa/A), and mineral soil (0–10 cm) carbon cycles on centennial timescales (~104 and 302 years, respectively). At the watershed-level, the soil system appears to be at steady-state, with no observed changes in carbon stocks or cycling rates over the study period, despite increases in precipitation, temperature, and soil pH. However, at the site-level, the Oi/Oe is losing carbon (−15 g C m⁻² year⁻¹ since 1998). The observed decline in carbon stocks can be detected when the Oi and Oe layers are modeled separately. This pattern suggests that the rapidly cycling litter layer at the smaller scale is responding to recent environmental changes. Our results highlight the importance of litter carbon as an “early-warning system” for soil responses to environmental change, as well as the challenges of detecting gradual environmental change across spatial scales in natural forest ecosystems.