Soil Texture

“Pairing 13C-labeled tracer incubations across sandy-to-loamy soils (17-67% sand) with Cycles model runs for continuous maize in Nebraska and Illinois shows that soil texture strongly controls whether added carbon is respired as CO2 or retained as soil organic matter, and that texture, precipitation and drying-rewetting frequency together with tillage regime (no-till vs. conventional) determine future soil carbon change. The dataset provides the respiration, soil carbon retention and simulated soil organic carbon and maize yield outputs behind those comparisons.”

“Across 50 commercial corn-belt fields in Ohio and Indiana, manure application rate was the strongest and most consistent driver of better soil health across six indicators (organic matter, respiration, POX-C, protein, aggregate stability, bulk density). Reduced tillage helped soil protein and respiration but lowered POX-C, while living cover and crop diversity showed little measurable effect; soil texture explained much of the field-to-field variation, and using 5 years of management history predicted better than 3.”