Plant–Soil–Microbe Interactions Shaping Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics in a Changing Climate

Soil organic carbon plays an important role in maintaining ecosystem goods and services, biodiversity conservation, and mitigating and adapting to climate change. The important role of plant-soil-microbe interactions in regulating soil organic carbon formation, decomposition and stabilization is becoming increasingly recognized by the scientific community. Though substantial progress has been made over the last few decades, many critical questions remain, including how plant communities influence soil organic carbon stabilization and destabilization across scales (individual to landscape); how above- vs below-ground carbon inputs differentially contribute to soil organic carbon decomposition vs formation; and how plant traits, microbial processes, soil properties, and climate drivers collectively shape soil organic carbon dynamics in response to global climate changes, such as elevated CO2, warming and nitrogen deposition.We encourage studies to explore the processes, patterns, and mechanisms underpinning plant-soil-microbe interactions that regulate soil organic carbon dynamics across terrestrial ecosystems under global climate changes. A key knowledge gap is how plants influence soil organic carbon decomposition, formation, destabilization and stabilization via biological and abiotic interactions including microbial community composition, functional diversity, enzyme activity, aggregation, mineral-associated carbon protection. Plant effects on soil organic carbon dynamics can be related to carbon inputs through litter and rhizodeposition, plant functional traits such as leaf and root morphological traits, physiological traits and mycorrhizal associations, along with uptake of water and nutrients or the influence on micro-environmental conditions. Contributions linking soil organic carbon dynamics with boarder biogeochem-ical processes of plants (e.g., nutrient cycling and energy transformation) are of particular interest.We welcome original research, reviews, modeling, synthesis, and methodological advances, provided they align with the following major themes:• Plant effects on soil organic carbon formation, decomposition and stabilization• Plant nutrient foraging strategies and plant-microbe interactions shaping soil organic carbon dynamics via soil microbes• Physiological response of plants to climate change and consequences of microbial-mediated changes in soil properties• The symbiotic dynamics between plants and microbial diversity and function and thus soil organic carbon stabilization and destabilization.• Novel conceptual, methodological, and cross-scale approaches for processes and mechanisms Topic editors: Liming Yin, Ludovic Henneron, Xiao Jun Allen Liu, Xiaohong Wang Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/76623/plant-soil-microbe-interactions-shaping-soil-organic-carbon-dynamics-in-a-changing-climate