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  • Perspective
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A landscape-scale view of soil organic matter dynamics

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 6, pages 67–81 (2025)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 17 January 2025

This article has been updated

Abstract

Soil carbon is an important component of the terrestrial carbon cycle and could be augmented through improved soil management to mitigate climate change. However, data gaps for numerous regions and a lack of understanding of the heterogeneity of biogeochemical processes across diverse soil landscapes hinder the development of large-scale representations of soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics. In this Perspective, we outline how understanding soil formation processes and complexity at the landscape scale can inform predictions of soil organic matter (SOM) cycling and soil carbon sequestration. Long-term alterations of the soil matrix caused by weathering and soil redistribution vary across climate zones and ecosystems, but particularly with the structure of landscapes at the regional scale. Thus, oversimplified generalizations that assume that the drivers of SOM dynamics can be scaled directly from local to global regimes and vice versa leads to large uncertainties in global projections of soil C stocks. Data-driven models with enhanced coverage of underrepresented regions, particularly where soils are physicochemically distinct and environmental change is most rapid, are key to understanding C turnover and stabilization at landscape scales to better predict global soil carbon dynamics.

Key points

  • Lack of high-resolution soil data for many regions and poor understanding of biogeochemical processes across diverse soil landscapes lead to uncertainties in estimates of soil organic matter (SOM) loss and carbon sequestration potential.

  • Plant C input, microbial turnover and organic matter stabilization are influenced by soil heterogeneities that arise from soil formation and degradation processes operating and interacting across various spatial scales, ranging from large-scale controls, such as geology and climate, to localized ones, such as topography and biology.

  • Human activities such as agriculture have influenced soil development for millennia. The pace, magnitude and breadth of these impacts has increased throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries owing to the growing use of mechanized agriculture and synthetic fertilizers to produce food.

  • Approaches to represent and predict SOM dynamics that neglect landscape complexity, and instead scale information from plot-level measurements to regional and global contexts, lead to biased interpretations and uncertainties.

  • Accounting for long-term alteration of the soil matrix at the landscape scale is key to improving forecasts of the soil C cycle in regions experiencing rapid environmental changes (such as polar and tropical regions) and regions with soil properties distinct from those assumed by existing Earth system models. Integrating global datasets with data from field and laboratory experiments can support such developments.

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Fig. 1: Global-scale patterns of soil formation and limiting weathering force.
Fig. 2: Carbon dynamics and controls during soil development.
Fig. 3: Impact of land conversion on hillslope sink carbon cycling.
Fig. 4: Soil organic matter recovery after disturbance.
Fig. 5: Soil organic matter dynamics across spatial and temporal scales.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Soil Resources Group, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Sebastian Doetterl

  2. Life and Environmental Sciences, UC Merced, Merced, CA, USA

    Asmeret Asefaw Berhe

  3. Forest Service, USDA, Houghton, MI, USA

    Katherine Heckman

  4. Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center, USGS, Denver, CO, USA

    Corey Lawrence

  5. Microbiology and Ecosystem Science, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Jörg Schnecker

  6. Department of Plant and Soil Science, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Rodrigo Vargas

  7. Soil Science and Site Ecology, TU Dresden, Tharandt, Germany

    Cordula Vogel

  8. National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

    Rota Wagai

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S.D., K.H., C.L., R.V. and R.W. researched data for the article. All authors contributed substantially to discussion of the content. S.D., K.H., C.L., R.V. and R.W. wrote the article. All authors reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

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Doetterl, S., Berhe, A.A., Heckman, K. et al. A landscape-scale view of soil organic matter dynamics. Nat Rev Earth Environ 6, 67–81 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-024-00621-2

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