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4 - Carbon as a substrate for soil organisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2009

By
D. W. Hopkins  and
E. G. Gregorich
Edited by
Richard Bardgett ,
Michael Usher  and
David Hopkins
D. W. Hopkins
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
E. G. Gregorich
Affiliation:
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Richard Bardgett
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Michael Usher
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
David Hopkins
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Summary

SUMMARY

  1. In many ecological studies, soil carbon is regarded as a barely differentiated whole with little attention paid to its underlying characteristics.

  2. Although it is widely appreciated that decomposer organisms are nearly infallible as degraders of organic molecules, there are marked differences in the utilisation of different components of organic matter by organisms depending on chemical and physical characteristics, location and availability in time in soil.

  3. We discuss the characteristics of soil carbon as a substrate and emphasise a ‘soil metabolomic’ approach for characterising the range of molecules in complex, composite substrates, and the potential that stable isotope probing offers for linking organisms to their substrates via enrichment of their biomolecules as they exploit isotopically enriched substrates.

  4. Using selected examples, we examine the influence of the chemical characteristics/quality, quantity, location and timing of supply of organic matter on the amount, activity and, where possible, the diversity of soil organisms.

  5. We are some way from unifying relationships between the quality, quantity, location and timing of delivery or availability of soil carbon on the size, activity and diversity of soil organisms. However, we point ways forward in which the information on the physics, chemistry and management are linked to the biology of soils.

Introduction

Currency of soil carbon

Humans view soil carbon in various physical (e.g. aggregates, density fractions), chemical (e.g. carbohydrates, aromatic compounds), biological (e.g. microbial biomass) and even economic (e.g. dollars per tonne or carbon credits) ways which are not usually ecological.

Type
Chapter
Information
Biological Diversity and Function in Soils , pp. 57 - 80
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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