Linking Aggregate-Scale Mechanisms and Landscape-Scale Drivers to Understand Soil Carbon Dynamics.

Soil structure exerts significant controls on the soil physical and chemical environment. Further, it provides the habitat for plant roots and soil biota, thereby affecting their growth, function, turnover, and diversity. At the same time, soil biota (including roots) engineer and modify their own environment, largely through their interactions with soil minerals and organic matter in a self-organized feedback system. Their activities can alter the architecture of soil particles and pores and the stability of secondary aggregated structures, which further affects aeration, water and resource availability, and the cycling of soil organic matter. These dynamic and interactive complexities significantly impact the storage and cycling of soil organic matter. All of these factors also can be interpreted on the basis of the well-known soil forming factors of organisms, parent material, topography, climate, and time.  Hence, these connections may serve as an organizing mechanism for bridging between local scale and landscape scale processes.