The last decades have been characterized by increasing climatic extremes and a foreshadowing of what is to come in a rapidly warming world. The disturbance of climatic extremes, such as droughts, floods, heatwaves and fires, to soil biogeochemistry and plant resilience has major consequences for the cycling of carbon and nutrients. Yet, the magnitude and direction of these responses differ strongly among soil types, climatic regions, and ecosystem settings.
The session aims to identify both common mechanisms and soil-specific responses to climatic extremes, and to better understand how short-term perturbations by such climatic extremes translate into long-term changes of soil systems. The session will bring together experimental, observational, and modelling studies that investigate specific fundamental biogeochemical mechanisms as well as soil development and soil functioning at larger scales. We welcome contributions that give a perspective on biogeochemical changes in plant-soil systems from all climate zones and both natural and managed soil systems.
Topics may include carbon and nutrient transformations, microbial and mineral controls on organic matter persistence, plant and rhizosphere shifts, nutrient mobilization and limitation, redox-driven processes, greenhouse-gas fluxes, and the legacy effects of climatic extremes and its effects on soil functioning.