Abstract
Soil and other Earth scientists who conduct research on C management found themselves, in the past decade within a swirl of efforts concerning climate mitigation, economic and business investments in carbon markets, and political aspirations. All these external pressures are issues with which soil science is largely unfamiliar. As a result, science has responded without deeply considering the landscape in which it finds itself, and some of the unanticipated challenges these issues present. Here, we suggest soil C scientists now consider and respond to these issues. The first order challenge is to transition from the concept of technical carbon sequestration potentials, made in the absence of social and policy contexts, to societally achievable sequestration estimates based on highly transdisciplinary teams of natural and social sciences and scientists. To achieve this will requires re-thinking national science funding programs, in which climate-relevant social science is under-funded. In addition, the science of soil C itself is in need of a priority shift. Presently, publications in soil C sequestration out-strip papers on soil feedbacks to climate change, and on how to adapt soil to climate change: two areas of research which may well be more societal important in the next few decades than sequestering C. Most seriously, given the urgent nature of our collective societal climate problem, our profession must not find itself a decade from now continuing the now 20-year-old narrative that soil C can potentially mitigate climate change and compensate for greenhouse gas emissions. We must consider the possibility that other options and expenditures of resources are more viable, and we must reframe our science’s objectives to expand into the many other urgent needs that confront humanity.
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Notes
A cursory—and admittedly incomplete—review of papers in Biogeochemistry, Science, Nature, Soil Science Society of America Journal in the past 3 years reveals no reported conflicts of interest, by university professors, in soil carbon management related topics, a result that cannot be true given the pace of evolution of business relations the field. This may be simply due to a poor definition or articulation of what COI means, or an assumption that a submission from a university address is adequate separation of interests.
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Acknowledgements
This paper, and the special issue of which it is a part, resulted from the participation and enlivening discussion by many in the 2021 AGU symposium “Challenges and Opportunities of Managing Soil Carbon as a Natural Climate Solution.”
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Amundson received support from the University of California Agricultural Experiment Station and the Betty and Isaac Barshad Chair in Soil Science.
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Amundson, R., Buck, H. & Lajtha, K. Soil science in the time of climate mitigation. Biogeochemistry 161, 47–58 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-022-00952-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-022-00952-6