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Abstract
Significantly more carbon is stored in the world's soils--including peatlands, wetlands
and permafrost--than is present in the atmosphere. Disagreement exists, however, regarding
the effects of climate change on global soil carbon stocks. If carbon stored belowground
is transferred to the atmosphere by a warming-induced acceleration of its decomposition,
a positive feedback to climate change would occur. Conversely, if increases of plant-derived
carbon inputs to soils exceed increases in decomposition, the feedback would be negative.
Despite much research, a consensus has not yet emerged on the temperature sensitivity
of soil carbon decomposition. Unravelling the feedback effect is particularly difficult,
because the diverse soil organic compounds exhibit a wide range of kinetic properties,
which determine the intrinsic temperature sensitivity of their decomposition. Moreover,
several environmental constraints obscure the intrinsic temperature sensitivity of
substrate decomposition, causing lower observed 'apparent' temperature sensitivity,
and these constraints may, themselves, be sensitive to climate.