Effects of soil process formalisms and forcing factors on simulated organic carbon depth-distributions in soils.

Soil organic carbon (OC) sequestration (i.e. the capture and long-term storage of atmospheric CO) is being considered as a possible solution to mitigate climate change, notably through land use change (conversion of cropped land into pasture) and conservation agricultural practices (reduced tillage).

Evaluating SoilGen2 as a tool for projecting soil evolution induced by global change.

To protect soils against threats, it is necessary to predict the consequences of human activities and global change on their evolution on a ten to hundred year time scale. Mechanistic modelling of soil evolution is then a useful tool. We analysed the ability of the SoilGen model to be used for projections of soil characteristics associated to various soil threats: vertical distributions of <2μm fraction, organic carbon content (OC), bulk density and pH.