Climate change mitigation through soil carbon sequestration in working lands: A reality check

As global anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases keep rising, there is increased pressure to utilise so-called natural climate solutions. Sequestration of additional organic carbon in agricultural soils is one such approach but it continues to provoke much debate. Published estimates for the potential magnitude of soil carbon sequestration (SCS) vary dramatically, from very modest to very substantial (Moinet et al., 2023). The estimations recently published by Almaraz et al. (2023) are of the latter category and we question here the validity and realism of their claims.

This article is a Response to the Letter by McClelland et al, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17012 & Moinet et al, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17010, which was related to the paper of Almaraz et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16884

Letter to the Editor