Ecosystems, particularly soils, are a globally important reservoir for organic carbon (OC) and contribute significantly to CO2 emissions. Soil organic matter is further vital for soil fertility and sustainable agriculture, and has the potential to increase and safeguard agricultural yields against climate change. Reducing losses of organic carbon (OC) from soils and restoring or even further enhancing soil OC stocks therefore offers a strategy to combine the benefits of climate change mitigation with improved soil quality. Nevertheless there are still a range of frontier areas of research on soil OC that have to be tackled to understand and manage the potential of soils to sequester additional or maintain carbon. These include for example soil carbon saturation, carbon stability in subsoils, carbon input quality, soil structure and management practices, as well as ways to verify changes in soil carbon stocks. Also, there is still large uncertainty on the time scales at which carbon stays in soils and other ecosystem compartments, with flux based and modelling approaches often suggesting faster OC turnover than radiocarbon based approaches.
We invite presentations addressing these or other areas of pioneering research on SOM sequestration and temporal dynamics using experimental, synthesis, or modelling approaches.