Fig. 1: Microbial breakdown of recalcitrant compounds in deep peat upon labile carbon additions.
From: Adding labile carbon to peatland soils triggers deep carbon breakdown
Climate change can lead to increased plant productivity, thus vascular plants covering peatlands could add more labile root exudates into the subsoil. These substrates could be transported into thermodynamically constrained deep peat layers, which contain massive amounts of the world’s C. These labile carbon addition revives the microbial activity, changes microbial dynamics, and increases the breakdown of recalcitrant Soil Organic Matter (SOM), leading to release of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) into atmosphere.
