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Soil carbon science for policy and practice

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Soil-based initiatives to mitigate climate change and restore soil fertility both rely on rebuilding soil organic carbon. Controversy about the role soils might play in climate change mitigation is, consequently, undermining actions to restore soils for improved agricultural and environmental outcomes.

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Fig. 1: Pathways through which knowledge in soil science can flow to inform soil restoration by rebuilding soil organic carbon (SOC).

graphic by Luminant Design.

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Acknowledgements

This work was part of the ‘Managing Soil Carbon’ working group for the Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP). We thank Luminant Design LLC for figure development and production.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Mark A. Bradford, Eli P. Fenichel, Daniel A. Kane, Emily E. Oldfield & Stephen A. Wood

  2. Point Blue Conservation Science, Petaluma, CA, USA

    Chelsea J. Carey

  3. Science for Nature and People Partnership, National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis, University of California - Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Lesley Atwood

  4. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA, USA

    Deborah Bossio, Sasha Gennet, Joseph Fargione, Jonathan R. B. Fisher & Stephen A. Wood

  5. Granular Inc, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Emma Fuller

  6. Soil and Crop Science, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Johannes Lehmann

  7. Institute of Advanced Studies, Technical University Munich, Garching, Germany

    Johannes Lehmann

  8. Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Elsa M. Ordway

  9. Environmental Defense Fund, New York City, NY, USA

    Joseph Rudek

  10. Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA

    Jonathan Sanderman

Authors
  1. Mark A. Bradford
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  2. Chelsea J. Carey
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  3. Lesley Atwood
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  4. Deborah Bossio
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  5. Eli P. Fenichel
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  6. Sasha Gennet
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  7. Joseph Fargione
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  8. Jonathan R. B. Fisher
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  9. Emma Fuller
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  10. Daniel A. Kane
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  11. Johannes Lehmann
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  12. Emily E. Oldfield
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  13. Elsa M. Ordway
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  14. Joseph Rudek
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  15. Jonathan Sanderman
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  16. Stephen A. Wood
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Contributions

The manuscript emerged from the SNAPP working group, of which the authors were participants. M.A.B. wrote the initial draft, which was refined by C.J.C., E.E.O., D.A.K., S.A.W., D.B., J.S., J.F. and J.L., prior to further development by all authors. C.J.C. developed the initial draft of the figure.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark A. Bradford.

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Bradford, M.A., Carey, C.J., Atwood, L. et al. Soil carbon science for policy and practice. Nat Sustain 2, 1070–1072 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0431-y

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