Soil is the largest terrestrial pool of carbon. Consequently, soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil inorganic carbon (SIC) are the main indicators of soil health, fertility, and biodiversity.
Effective monitoring and modeling of SOC and SIC stocks are necessary to understand their dynamics and identify chances for sustainable management, and are crucial to define the soil health status, its dynamics and impact.
Modeling techniques of soil traits, and especially the stable C fraction, are thus essential for scaling up data and predicting future changes, but monitoring at spatiotemporal levels and on the soil profile in agroecosystem and natural system is still an important challenge.
Soil carbon storage and dynamics, and soil health can greatly be affected by land cover and management, including clear-cutting, soil sealing, and agricultural intensification, especially tillage, application of fertilisers and residues, use of active ingredients, and reduction of the diversification.
In addition, climate change, and especially the variation in temperature and precipitation patterns, can modify the dynamics of soil carbon, through a effect on soil moisture regime and microbial activity, with scarcely predictable effects on soil health and nutrient availability for crops, animals, and microbes.
Nutrient availability regulates C decomposition and stabilization, thereby tightly linking nutrient cycles with soil dynamics of C and other elements, with special emphasis to N. Tools such as isotopic tracers, lysimeter studies, and digital monitoring platforms provide new insights into nutrient fluxes and their interactions with soil carbon pools.
This session addresses the dynamics of SOC, SIC, and nutrients in agroecosystems, and definition and application of soil health, and investigates innovative monitoring and modelling strategies for optimizing soil carbon and nutrient management, and predict soil health depending on the management, and finally support decision-making in natural and agroecosystems. Contributions that integrate monitoring and modelling of nutrient–carbon interactions and that highlight their implications for sustainable soil management are particularly welcome