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Soil carbon

Microbes and global carbon

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The amount of organic material that microbes assimilate into their biomass is critical in regulating whether soils, the planet's main pool of organic matter, will absorb or emit carbon in a warmer world.

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Figure 1: The stabilization of plant carbon into soil carbon as represented in Earth system models.

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Correspondence to Joshua Schimel.

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Schimel, J. Microbes and global carbon. Nature Clim Change 3, 867–868 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2015

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