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Environmental science

Carbon unlocked from soils

Nature volume 437, pages 205–206 (2005)Cite this article

Changes in climate and land use are implicated as the main factors in the large-scale loss of carbon from soils in England and Wales over the past 25 years. The same picture is likely to apply much more broadly.

Soils are major players in the carbon cycle — globally, they store the equivalent of about 300 times the amount of carbon now released annually through the burning of fossil fuels. It is generally assumed that most of the carbon locked up in soils is inert, and stays there. But as Bellamy et al. report on page 245 of this issue1, soil carbon may be more vulnerable to changing climate and patterns of land use than expected.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, PO Box 1001 64, Jena, 07701, Germany

    E. Detlef Schulze & Annette Freibauer

Authors
  1. E. Detlef Schulze
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  2. Annette Freibauer
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Schulze, E., Freibauer, A. Carbon unlocked from soils. Nature 437, 205–206 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/437205a

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