Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may get the lion's share of attention in climate change discussions, but the biggest repository of carbon is actually underfoot: soils store an estimated 2.5 trillion tons of carbon in the form of organic matter.
"The combined amount of carbon in vegetation and the atmosphere is only half of the carbon stored in soils," said Melanie Mayes of ORNL's Environmental Sciences Division. "How quickly that carbon moves in and out of soils is one of the big uncertainties in modeling the carbon cycle."
With an eye on the big picture, Mayes and her colleagues are taking a closer look at soil carbon by studying nanoscale interactions between organic matter and minerals in soil. The team's novel combination of neutron analysis and supercomputer simulations is providing experimental and theoretical data that challenge long-held assumptions in soil science. Read more here.
