Nature-based solutions are gaining momentum as approaches to address major environmental challenges, including markets for soil carbon (C) sequestration for mitigating climate change. This special collection of papers, stemming from a symposium of the 2021 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, poses several tough questions about the practical potential for significant C sequestration resulting from farmer participation in carbon markets. A common theme among these papers is that promotion of soil C sequestration through carbon markets has likely gotten ahead of the agronomic and biogeochemical science and especially the social science. We know a great deal about soil C dynamics and stabilization, but we know less about translating that knowledge to market-based solutions that have inherent challenges of validating sequestration rates and other potential pitfalls. Scientists can help provide rigor to carbon markets, although they must maintain objectivity and avoid conflicts of interests with well-intended evolving markets. Even when there is strong scientific support for the feasibility and the virtues of best management practices that provide numerous co-benefits while building soil organic matter, socio-economic barriers to farmer adoption remain poorly understood. Although soil markets currently focus almost exclusively on C, mitigation of methane and nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture could offer several advantages as well as challenges. The papers in this special collection offer a needed perspective urging soil scientists, biogeochemists, and social scientists to step up and offer honest appraisals of what is most likely to work, or not, and why.

作为应对主要环境挑战的方法，基于自然的解决方案正在获得动力，包括为缓解气候变化而进行的土壤碳 (C) 封存市场。这份特别的论文集源于美国地球物理联盟 2021 年秋季会议的一次研讨会，就农民参与碳市场导致的大量碳封存的实际潜力提出了几个棘手的问题。这些论文的一个共同主题是，通过碳市场促进土壤固碳可能已经领先于农艺和生物地球化学科学，尤其是社会科学。我们对土壤碳动态和稳定性了解很多，但我们对将这些知识转化为基于市场的解决方案知之甚少，这些解决方案在验证封存率和其他潜在陷阱方面存在固有挑战。科学家可以帮助为碳市场提供严谨性，尽管他们必须保持客观性并避免与善意的不断发展的市场发生利益冲突。即使在建立土壤有机质的同时提供许多共同利益的最佳管理实践的可行性和优点得到强有力的科学支持，农民采用的社会经济障碍仍然知之甚少。尽管土壤市场目前几乎完全专注于碳，但减少农业中的甲烷和一氧化二氮排放可能会带来一些优势和挑战。这个特别合集中的论文提供了一个必要的视角，敦促土壤科学家，