ArticleScience advances2025
Soil carbon formation is promoted by saturation deficit and existing mineral-associated carbon, not by microbial carbon-use efficiency.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Litter Inputs Promoted Soil Organic Carbon Formation by Increasing Particulate Organic Carbon on the Eastern Edge of the Tibetan Plateau.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Hump-Shaped Relationship Between Microbial Carbon Use-Efficiency and Soil Organic Carbon in Alpine Grasslands.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Year-to-year variation in organic fertilization effects on soil carbon stabilization and microbial networks.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) is the largest terrestrial pool of organic carbon, yet controls on its formation remain unresolved. Existing MAOC is thought to preclude additional C storage on minerals, but this perspective is difficult to reconcile with observations that MAOC stacks in multilayers, suggesting that existing MAOC could promote greater C retention. Here, in a manipulative experiment using 118 soils from 15 agricultural sites across the United States, we show that MAOC formation is promoted by both existing MAOC and its counterpart-MAOC saturation deficit. The positive effect of existing MAOC on the formation of new MAOC persists after accounting for soil physicochemical properties that covary with MAOC. In contrast with current theory, we found that MAOC formation was not clearly influenced by microbial carbon-use efficiency (CUE). Our findings demonstrate that existing MAOC and saturation deficit, not microbial CUE, are key to determining new MAOC formation in agricultural soils.
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