Christopher Poeplau

Thünen Institute | vTI · Institute of Agricultural Climate Research

Permafrost-agroecosystems include all cultivation and pastoral activities in areas underlain by permafrost. These systems support local livelihoods and food production and are rarely considered in global agricultural studies but may become more relevant as climate change is increasing opportunities for food production in high latitude and mountaino...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is significantly affected by land use change (LUC), which can lead to either SOC losses or gains. In consequence, LUC is a major controlling factor of total SOC contents and its dynamics. In general, LUC from forest or grassland to permanent cropland results in losses of SOC, while the reverse can result in long-term gains...

Partitioning soil organic carbon (SOC) in fractions with different biogeochemical stability is useful to better understand and predict SOC dynamics, and provide information related to soil health. Multiple SOC partition schemes exist but few of them can be implemented on large sample sets and therefore be considered as relevant options for soil mon...

Recently, Chaplot and Smith (2023) challenged the notion, that cover crops constitute an effective option to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. As much as we agree with the authors' position on the need for analytical rigour, we strongly question the validity of their study.

In this response to a letter to the editor, we provide evidence that the findings regarding a non-detectable limit of mineral-associated organic carbon as published in Begill et al. (2023) are robust. This is mainly done by showing that no methodological bias was present and that the main correlation was not driven by a few exceptional soils.

Permafrost-agroecosystems are highly heterogenous socio-ecological systems that include animal husbandry practices (such as reindeer and yak herding) and crop cultivation in areas that contain permafrost. These systems affect food security, culture and livelihoods and are particularly sensitive to permafrost degradation processes, surface stability...

Background and aims Understanding the fate and residence time of organic matter added to soils, and its effect on native soil organic carbon (SOC) mineralisation is key for developing efficient SOC sequestration strategies. Here, the effect of litter quality, particularly the carbon-to-nitrogen (C:N) ratio, on the dynamics of particulate (POC) and...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration is a promising climate change mitigation option. In this context, the formation of the relatively long-lived mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) is key. To date, soils are considered to be limited in their ability to accumulate MAOC, mainly by the amount of clay and silt particles present. Using the comp...

Soil is a precious and non‐renewable resource that is under increasing pressure and the development of indicators to monitor its state is pivotal. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is important for key physical, chemical and biological soil properties and thus a central indicator of soil quality and soil health. The content of SOC is driven by many abiotic...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) of agricultural soils is observed to decline in many parts of the world. Understanding the reasons behind such losses is important for SOC accounting and formulating climate mitigation strategies. Disentangling the impact of last century’s climate change from effects of preceding land use, management changes and erosion is...

Background Sustainable agriculture seeks to optimize the application of nitrogen (N) fertilizers to reduce adverse economic and ecological effects. Crop diversification has been proposed to increase the efficiency of N fertilization. An open question is how the soil microbiome responds to these beneficial practices. Methods In a field study we inv...

The climate-change-induced poleward shift of agriculture could lead to enforced deforestation of subarc-tic forest. Deforestation alters the microclimate and, thus, soil temperature, which is an important driver of decomposition. The consequences of land-use change on soil temperature and decomposition in temperature-limited ecosystems are not well...

The climate-change induced poleward shift of agriculture could lead to enforced deforestation of subarctic forest. Deforestation alters the microclimate and, thus, soil temperature, which is an important driver of decomposition. The consequences of land-use change on soil temperature and decomposition in temperature-limited ecosystems is not well u...

Purpose Flower strips have been shown to increase insect biodiversity and improve agricultural yields through increased pollination and pest predation. Less is known about their potential to increase soil organic carbon (SOC). We aimed to investigate the biomass production and SOC sequestration potential of flower strips as a sustainable management...

Agriculture is likely to expand poleward with climate change, encouraging deforestation for agriculture in subarctic regions, which alters soil physical, chemical and biological properties and potentially affects microbial metabolic efficiency. Deciphering how and by which mechanisms land-use change affects microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) wil...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) of agricultural soils is observed to decline in many parts of the world. For tearing apart management and climate change effects, the latter needs to be estimated comprehensively. In this study, an established FAO framework was used to model global agricultural topsoil SOC stock dynamics from 1919 to 2018 as attributable t...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) of agricultural soils is observed to decline in many parts of the world. For deconfounding management and climate change effects, the latter needs to be estimated comprehensively. In this study, an established FAO framework was used to model global agricultural topsoil SOC stock dynamics from 1919 to 2018 as attributable t...

Accurate estimation of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and dynamics along the soil profile is challenging due to the immense diversity and complexity of soils leading to the spatio-temporal variability of the parameters of interest. It is conducted in a wide range of different frameworks with diverse conceptual and analytical approaches. Our purpo...

Die Bodenzustandserhebung Landwirtschaft (BZE-LW) ist ein nationales Bodenmonitoring und dient der Erfassung von organischem Bodenkohlenstoff (C org) und dessen Veränderungen im Laufe der Zeit. Initial wurden von 2011-2018 an 3104 Standorten in Deutschland in einem Raster von 8 X 8 km mineralische und organische Böden flächendeckend untersucht. Zud...

Subarctic regions are particularly affected by global warming. As vegetation periods lengthen, boreal forests could gradually be converted into agricultural land. How land use alters the susceptibility of soil organic matter decomposition to rising temperatures or how changes in nutrient availability, such as nitrogen (N) fertilisation, affect carb...

Soil microbial carbon-use efficiency (CUE), described as the ratio of growth over total carbon (C) uptake, i.e. the sum of growth and respiration, is a key variable in all soil organic matter (SOM) models and critical to ecosystem C cycling. However, there is still a lack of consensus on microbial CUE when estimated using different methods. Further...

Purpose: Flower strips have been shown to increase insect biodiversity and improve agricultural yields through increased pollination and pest predation. Less is known about their potential to increase soil organic carbon (SOC). We aimed to investigate the biomass production and SOC sequestration potential of flower strips as a sustainable managemen...

Global warming may lead to carbon transfers from soils to the atmosphere, yet this positive feedback to the climate system remains highly uncertain, especially in subsoils (Ilyina and Friedlingstein, 2016; Shi et al., 2018). Using natural geothermal soil warming gradients of up to +6.4 ∘C in subarctic grasslands (Sigurdsson et al., 2016), we show t...

The northern circumpolar permafrost region is experiencing considerable warming due to climate change, which is allowing agricultural production to expand into regions of discontinuous and continuous permafrost. The conversion of forests to arable land might further enhance permafrost thaw and affect soil organic carbon (SOC) that had previously be...

Background Detecting changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) stock requires systematic and random sampling errors to be kept to a minimum. Especially in soil monitoring schemes based on soil profiles pits, it is important to understand if a minimum spatial shift of that profile pit during resampling could render resampling errors caused by spatial var...

In recent decades, mounting evidence has indicated that the expansion of oil palm (OP) plantations at the expense of tropical forest has had a far pernicious effect on ecosystem aspects. While various deforestation-free strategies have been proposed to enhance OP sustainability, field-based evidence still need to be consolidated, in particular with...

Global warming may lead to carbon transfers from soils to the atmosphere, yet this positive feedback to the cli- mate system remains highly uncertain, especially in subsoils (Ilyina and Friedlingstein, 2016; Shi et al., 2018). Using natural geothermal soil warming gradients of up to +6.4 °C in subarctic grasslands (Sigurdsson et al., 2016), we show...

The relative importance of various soil mineral constituents (e.g. clay-sized particles, aluminum- and iron-bearing mineral reactive phases) in protecting soil organic carbon (SOC) from decomposition is not yet fully understood in arable soils formed from quaternary deposits in humid continental climates. In this study, we investigated the relation...

Numerous approaches have been developed to isolate fast and slow cycling soil organic carbon (SOC) pools using physical and chemical fractionation. Most of these methods are complex, expensive, and time consuming and unsuited for high-throughput application, such as for regional scale assessments. For simpler and faster fractionation via particle s...

Treatment effects are traditionally quantified in controlled experiments. However, experimental control is often achieved at the expense of representativeness. Here, we present a data-driven reciprocal modelling framework to quantify the individual effects of environmental treatments under field conditions. The framework requires a representative s...

The ratio of soil organic carbon stock (SOC) to annual carbon input gives an estimate of the mean residence time of organic carbon that enters the soil (MRTOC ). It indicates how efficiently biomass can be transformed into SOC, which is of particular relevance for mitigating climate change by means of SOC storage. There have been few comprehensive...

Land surface models are used to provide global estimates of soil organic carbon (SOC) changes after past and future change land use change (LUC), in particular re-/deforestation. To evaluate how well the models capture decadal-scale changes in SOC after LUC, we provide the first consistent comparison of simulated time series of LUC by six land mode...

Partitioning soil organic carbon (SOC) into two kinetically different fractions that are stable or active on a century scale is key for an improved monitoring of soil health and for more accurate models of the carbon cycle. However, all existing SOC fractionation methods isolate SOC fractions that are mixtures of centennially stable and active SOC....

Global warming is accelerating the decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM). When predicting the net SOM dynamics in response to warming, there are considerable uncertainties owing to experimental limitations. Long-term in-situ whole-profile soil warming studies are particularly rare. This study used a long-term, naturally occurring geothermal gr...

Pre-treatment of soil samples prior to analysis is acknowledged to affect microbial activity and community parameters, but recommendations are diverging and there are no best-practice or standardised laboratory protocols. For the microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) as a ratio parameter of C allocated to anabolism over total metabolised C, the eff...

Grasslands are a major terrestrial ecosystem type and store large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) per unit area. Quantitative and mechanistic knowledge on the effects of management on SOC stocks in grasslands is limited. Also, climate change can be seen as an indirect anthropogenic threat to SOC stocks, with warming effects on grassland SOC be...

Erfassen, erhalten und fördern Humusaufbau ist positiv-vor allem für die Landwirte selbst, um die Folgen des Klimawandels abzupuffern. Als gesellschaftlicher Beitrag zum Klimaschutz wird er dagegen überschätzt, sagen Axel Don, Christopher Poeplau und Heinz Flessa. Landwirte kennen die positiven Wirkungen eines humosen, belebten Bodens mit günstiger...

Aims Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks is discussed as negative emission technology with the potential to remove relevant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. At the same time, climate change-driven losses of SOC to the atmosphere might impede such goals. Methods In this study, we used an ensemble of different SOC models and climate pr...

Partitioning soil organic carbon (SOC) into two kinetically different fractions that are centennially stable or active is key information for an improved monitoring of soil health and for a more accurate modelling of the carbon cycle. However, all existing SOC fractionation methods isolate SOC fractions that are mixtures of centennially stable and...

Organischer Bodenkohlenstoff (SOC) ist der größte terrestrische Kohlenstoff (C)-Pool, welcher ein Vielfaches des gesamten atmosphären C speichert. Landwirtschaftliche Nutzung von Böden hat einen starken Einfluß auf diesen Speicher und so auch auf C-Flüsse zwischen Atmosphäre und Biosphäre. Historsich haben Landnutzungsänderungen zu starken CO2-Emis...

The quantity and quality of organic carbon (C org) input drive soil C org stocks and thus fertility and climate mitigation potential of soils. To estimate fluxes of C org as net primary production (NPP), exports, and inputs on German arable and grassland soils, we used field management data surveyed within the Agricultural Soil Inventory (n = 27.40...

Background: There is considerable uncertainty about the actual size of the global soil organic carbon (SOC) pool and its spatial distribution due to insufficient and heterogeneous data coverage. Aims: We aimed to assess the size of the German agricultural SOC stock and develop a stratification approach that could be used in national greenhouse gas...

The net loss of soil organic carbon (SOC) from terrestrial ecosystems is a likely consequence of global warming and may affect key soil functions. The strongest changes in temperature are expected to occur at high northern latitudes, with forest and tundra as prevailing land cover types. However, specific soil responses to warming in different ecos...

: Climate change may increase the importance of agriculture in the global Circumpolar North with potentially critical implications for pristine northern ecosystems and global biogeochemical cycles. With this in mind, a global online survey was conducted to understand northern agriculture and farmers’ perspective on environmental change north of 60°...

Net loss of soil organic carbon (SOC) from terrestrial ecosystems is a likely consequence of global warming and this may affect key soil functions. Strongest changes in temperature are expected to occur at high northern latitudes, with boreal forest and tundra as prevailing land-cover types. However, specific ecosystem responses to warming are unde...

Various soil organic carbon (SOC) models and additional methods to calculate carbon (C) input to soil are used to simulate SOC stocks, e.g. for national greenhouse gas inventories. Most of the SOC models used on a regional to national scale share the principle of process-based multi-compartment models, but differ in their initialization or decompos...

Background and aims Belowground carbon (C) inputs are a major source of soil organic carbon (SOC) in terrestrial ecosystems, and substrate C:N ratios drive SOC stabilisation. In perennial systems, quantitative information on seasonal dynamics of belowground biomass is scarce, but necessary, e.g. to improve SOC modelling and representative sampling....

Soil warming can increase soil organic carbon (SOC) mineralization, triggering a positive climate‑carbon cycle feedback loop. Globally, many soil warming experiments have examined losses of bulk SOC, but few have assessed changes in quality. Accurate knowledge of the latter is required for an in-depth understanding and improved prediction of SOC fe...

Die 4-Promille-Initiative der französischen Regierung stellt den Erhalt und die Vermehrung von organischer Substanz in landwirtschaftlichen Böden und deren Bedeutung für den Klimaschutz, die Anpassung an den Klimawandel und die Ernährungssicherung in den Mittelpunkt. Die Rele-vanz der globalen Vorräte organischer Bodensubstanz für den globalen Kohl...

Ecosystem responses to nitrogen (N) additions are manifold and complex, and also affect the carbon (C) cycle. It has been suggested that increased microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE), i.e. growth per C uptake, due to higher N availability potentially increases the stabilization rates of organic inputs to the soil. However, evidence for a direct l...

Information about soil organic carbon fractions is important in understanding the vulnerability of soil carbon to climate change and land management. Soil organic carbon can be divided into fractions that are labile and others that are more stable. All existing methods to fractionate soil organic carbon are time consuming and complex. Near‐infrared...

Globally, grasslands are a major land cover type and store significant amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC). Fertilization with the major plant nutrients nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) may affect SOC stocks, e.g., by altering aboveground and belowground plant productivity, species composition, litter composition and decomposition,...

Land use and their change have dramatic consequences for above-ground biodiversity, but their impact on soil microbial communities is poorly understood. In this study, soils from 19 European sites representing conversion of croplands to grasslands or forests and of grasslands to croplands or forests were characterized for microbial abundance and ba...

Estimation of inputs of belowground carbon constitutes a major uncertainty in carbon (C) balance models. Fixed allocation coefficients are widely used although root:shoot ratio is known to respond to abiotic stressors. This pot experiment investigated the C allocation response of spring barley (Hordeum vulgare, L.) to soil texture and nutrient avai...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) turnover is the most ubiquitous and ecologically fundamental process in soils. It is generally assumed that SOC is utilized by functionally redundant soil-specific microbial communities which do not differ in their capability to mineralise soil organic matter. To challenge this assumption, incubation experiments were condu...

Estimation of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks requires estimates of the carbon content, bulk density, rock fragment content and depth of a respective soil layer. However, different application of these parameters could introduce a considerable bias. Here, we explain why three out of four frequently applied methods overestimate SOC stocks. In soils...

To maximise carbon (C) storage in soils, understanding the fate of C originating from aboveground and belowground residues and their interaction with fertiliser under field conditions is critically important. The use of ¹³C natural abundance provides unique opportunities to separate both C sources. We investigated the effect of 16 years of C3 straw...

Land use directly impacts ecosystem carbon and indirectly influences atmospheric carbon. Computing ecosystem carbon for an area experiencing changes in land use is not trivial, as carbon densities change slowly after land-use changes. We developed a tool, CarboScen, to estimate ecosystem carbon in landscapes. It is a simple tool typically used with...

Estimation of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks requires estimates of the carbon content, bulk density, stone content and depth of a respective soil layer. However, different application of these parameters could introduce a considerable bias. Here, we explain why three out of four frequently applied methods overestimate SOC stocks. In stone rich so...

Background and aimsCarbon inputs to soil are mostly site- and management-nonspecific estimates based on measured yield. However, in grasslands most carbon input is root-derived and plant carbon allocation patterns are known to vary strongly across sites and management regimes. The aim here was to estimate carbon inputs by fitting the RothC model to...

Terrestrial carbon cycle feedbacks to global warming are major uncertainties in climate models. For in-depth understanding of changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) after soil warming, long-term responses of SOC stabilisation mechanisms such as aggregation, organo-mineral interactions and chemical recalcitrance need to be addressed. This study invest...

Climate change and stagnating crop yields may cause a decline of SOC stocks in agricultural soils leading to considerable CO2 emissions and reduced agricultural productivity. Regional model-based SOC projections are needed to evaluate these potential risks. In this study, we simulated the future SOC development in cropland and grassland soils of Ba...

Soils contain the largest terrestrial carbon pool and thus play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. Grassland soils have particularly high soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. In Europe (EU 25), grasslands cover 22 % of the land area. It is therefore important to understand the effects of grassland management and management intensity on SOC sto...

Soils contain the largest terrestrial carbon pool and thus play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. Grassland soils have particularly high soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. In Europe (EU 25), grasslands cover 22% of the land area. It is therefore important to understand the effects of grassland management and management intensity on SOC stor...

Multifunctionality of ecosystems and the relations between biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services have recently received increased scientific and practical interest. For management of ecosystem services, which is presently high on the political agenda (e.g. MAES 2013 at the EU level, IBPES at the global level, the Swedish government and EPA n...

Crop residue incorporation (RI) is recommended to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. However, the positive effect on SOC is often reported to be relatively low and alternative use of crop residues, e.g. as a bioenergy source, may be more climate smart. In this context, it is important to understand: (i) the response of SOC stocks to long-te...

This article describes how natural geothermal soil temperature gradients in Iceland have been used to study terrestrial ecosystem responses to soil warming. The experimental approach was evaluated at three study sites in southern Iceland; one grassland site that has been warm for at least 50 years (GO), and another comparable grassland site (GN) an...

Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) in agricultural soils can mitigate atmospheric CO2 concentration and also contribute to increase soil fertility and ecosystem resilience. The role of major nutrients on SOC dynamics is complex, due to simultaneous effects on net primary productivity (NPP) that influence crop residue carbon inputs and on the rate...

Land use science has traditionally used case-study approaches for in-depth investigation of land use change processes and impacts. Meta-studies synthesize findings across case-study evidence to identify general patterns. In this paper, we provide a review of meta-studies in land use science. Various meta-studies have been conducted, which synthesiz...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) plays a crucial role in the global carbon cycle as a potential sink or source. Land management influences SOC storage, so the European Parliament decided in 2013 that changes in carbon stocks within a certain land use type, including arable land, must be reported by all member countries in their national inventory reports...

Root crops are significant in agro-ecosystems of temperate climates. However, the amounts of crop residues for these crop types are not well documented and they need to be accounted for in the modeling of soil organic carbon dynamics. Our objective was to review field measurements of root biomass left in the soil as crop residues at harvest for pot...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) plays a crucial role in the global carbon cycle as a potential sink or source. Land management influences SOC storage, so the European Parliament decided in 2013 that changes in carbon stocks within a certain land use type, including arable land, must be reported by all member countries in their national inventory reports...

A promising option to sequester carbon in agricultural soils is the inclusion of cover crops in cropping systems. The advantage of cover crops as compared to other management practices that increase soil organic carbon (SOC) is that they neither cause a decline in yields, like extensification, nor carbon losses in other systems, like organic manure...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) storage can be increased by incorporating crop residues such as straw. However, the use of straw as a bioenergy source is an alternative option. There is currently great uncertainty concerning the effects of residue incorporation/removal, but estimates can be improved by using well-documented, frequently sampled long-term...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an important ecosystem property and a potential sink for atmospheric CO2. Many agricultural soils are depleted in SOC and thus have the need and potential to sequester carbon. Cover crops used to prevent nitrate leaching in agroecosystems might be an additional cost-effective and multi-beneficial carbon input, but littl...

Bioenergy has to meet increasing sustainability criteria in the EU putting conventional bioenergy crops under pressure. Alternatively, perennial bioenergy crops, such as Miscanthus, show higher greenhouse gas savings with similarly high energy yields. In addition, Miscanthus plantations may sequester additional soil organic carbon (SOC) to mitigate...

Ultrasonic dispersion is a prevalent tool for soil fractionation. It is widely ignored that variation in ultrasonic power might lead to significantly different dispersion. We evaluated the effect of power variation with constant energy on the fine fraction mass, its organic C content and quality. All parameters increased significantly with power. T...

The management of soils as well as the impact of land use or climate changes are often evaluated in view of the storage of total soil organic carbon (SOC). However, as soil organic matter (SOM) is composed of different compounds with different degrees of stability and turnover times, there is the need for a soil- and land use-specific quantificatio...

Fractionation of soil is undertaken to isolate organic carbon with distinct functional properties, such as stability and turnover times. Soil organic carbon (SOC) fractionation helps us to understand better the response of SOC to changes in land use, management or climate. However, fractionation procedures are often poorly defined and there is litt...

In Europe, an estimated 17-21 million hectares (Mha) of land will need to be converted to bioenergy crop production to meet the EU bioenergy targets for 2020. Conventional bioenergy crops, such as maize and oilseed rape, are known for high greenhouse gas emissions. Perennial grases, such as Miscanthus, are seen as sustainable alternative, due to lo...