Long-term contrasting land uses influence on soil pore structure and organic carbon

The advancements of agriculture practices and technologies in harnessing natural resources has been a major component of humanity's development to produce and maintain food safety. As the bed for agricultural crops, soils are a major natural resource, and soil structure plays a crucial role in agricultural productivity. Long term differences in land use and agronomic management result in differences in soil physical structure, which also translates into variations in pore networks. Decomposition of organic matter and, hence, soil carbon storage capacity are closely related to the pore domain, which is the main environment where chemical and biological processes leading to carbon protection or decomposition take place. In this study, we explored pore structure, carbon characteristics, and their relationships in contrasting ecological systems from a long-term (> 30 years) experiment located at Kellogg Biological Station (Michigan, USA). The studied systems are (i) an agricultural intensively managed system of corn-soybean-wheat rotation (CT), (ii) a native early successional community abandoned from agriculture in 1989 (ES), (iii) a mowed grassland that has never been tilled or in agriculture (NTG), and (iv) late-successional deciduous forest that has never been cleared for agriculture (DF). An x-ray tomography analysis of intact soil cores was used to investigate pore size distributions, connectivity, and morphology to assess soil pore structure. We also measured total soil carbon and nitrogen contents, mineral associated organic carbon (MAOM), and particulate organic carbon (POM), short- and long-term soil respiration, and microbial biomass carbon. Preliminary results showed that the volumes of the soil pores with 30-180 mm Ø, the size range considered as the optimal microbial habitat, followed the trend of DF>NTG »ES>CT. The nitrogen and carbon content of these systems are also in agreement with this trend. Interestingly, MAOM fraction, considered to be a more recalcitrant form of carbon, followed the same trend, while the ratio of MAOM to total organic carbon did not change notably among the systems.