The vast majority of carbon on Earth's surface is contained in soils. One type, black carbon, is a major portion of organic carbon in soil. Being very stable, black carbon was assumed to have had no effect on other soil processes, but new evidence suggests that it significantly influences the stability of the entire soil organic carbon pool. This hypothesis will be tested by adding labeled organic carbon to black carbon-enriched soil from the Amazon Basin. Tracking the added organic carbon, the surfaces of black carbons and the mechanism of carbon stabilization will be examined using advanced spectroscopic, mass spectrometric and DNA techniques to detect nano-scale variations of carbon transformations. The findings of these experiments are very important for soil carbon cycling and therefore all environmental services of soils such as acting as a filter for solutes, sustaining agricultural productivity, and influencing global carbon cycling and therefore climate change. Revisions to existing global carbon and climate change models have to be made to accommodate the new mechanism. Furthermore, this new insight into carbon dynamics has the potential to provide opportunities for land-based carbon sequestration to mitigate the anthropogenic greenhouse effect.
