Organic carbon in the top metre of Earth’s soils is far older than previously thought, averaging 4,800 years old. These radiocarbon-derived age estimates require us to recalibrate our expectations of ecosystem gains and losses of carbon.
References
Trumbore, S. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 37, 47–66 (2009).
Shi, Z. et al. Nat. Geosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0596-z (2020).
Lawrence, C. R. et al. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 12, 61–76 (2020).
He, Y. et al. Science 353, 1419–1424 (2016).
Giardina, C. P., Litton, C. M., Crow, S. E. & Asner, G. P. Nat. Clim. Change 4, 822–827 (2014).
Ziegler, S. E. et al. Front. Earth Sci. 5, 2 (2017).
Kramer, M. G. & Chadwick, O. A. Nat. Clim. Change 8, 1104–1108 (2018).
Richter, D. deB. & Billings, S. A. New Phytol. 206, 900–912 (2015).
Calabrese, S., Richter, D. D. & Porporato, A. Geophys. Res. Lett. 45, 7588–7595 (2018).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Billings, S.A., de Souza, L.F.T. Earth’s soil harbours ancient carbon. Nat. Geosci. 13, 527–528 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0614-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0614-1
- Springer Nature Limited