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. Modeling techniques of soil carbon are essential for scaling up data and predicting future changes, but monitoring at spatiotemporal levels in agroecosystem management is still an important challenge.
Soil carbon stores can be greatly influenced by land cover and management, including clear-cutting, soil sealing, and agricultural intensification, especially tillage. In addition, climate change, especially temperature and precipitation patterns, can modify the dynamics of soil carbon, through an effect on soil moisture regime and microbial activity. Droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events have become more frequent and severe due to global warming, which might further affect soil carbon levels.
Also, bulk Density (BD) influences the accuracy of carbon stock calculations and is therefore an important factor in soil carbon monitoring. BD is strongly, but not solely, affected by soil compaction, tillage, and the application of organic amendments. Erroneously measured or calculated BD can thus imply errors in soil carbon stock estimation.
Nutrient availability regulates C decomposition and stabilization processes, thereby tightly linking nutrient cycles with soil C dynamics. 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, while investigating innovative monitoring and modelling strategies for optimizing soil carbon and nutrient management, such as machine learning, process-based models, and remote sensing, to improve our knowledge of soil carbon and nutrient dynamics and to 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.