Land-use and other biogeochemical constraints modulate priming effect at the landscape scale: a fingerprinting approach using analytical pyrolysis

Soil has the potential to sequester or to emit great amounts of CO2, since soil carbon stocks constitute the largest terrestrial reservoir of carbon. Land-use is among the main factors affecting the net storage or the net mineralization of soil organic carbon (SOC) and land-use policies are currently aiming to increase soil organic carbon stocks.However, adding labile sources of carbon to soil (e.g. more crop residues or manure) may alter the carbon cycle, increasing the microbial degradation of the existing SOC pools, a process called “priming effect” (PE). PE could significantly reduce the net storage of carbon and taking into account this effect into carbon storage models may alter their…