Fresh carbon input differentially impacts soil carbon decomposition across natural and managed systems

The amount of fresh carbon input into soil is experiencing substantial changes under global change. It is unclear what will be the consequences of such input changes on native soil carbon decomposition across ecosystems. By synthesizing data from 143 experimental comparisons, we show that, on average, fresh carbon input stimulates soil carbon decomposition by 14%. The response was lower in forest soils (1%) compared with soils from other ecosystems (> 24%), and higher following inputs of plant residue-like substrates (31%) compared to root exudate-like substrates (9%). The responses decrease with the baseline soil carbon decomposition rate under no additional carbon input, but increase with the fresh carbon input rate. The rates of these changes vary significantly across ecosystems and with the carbon substrates being added. These findings can be applied to provide robust estimates of soil carbon balance across ecosystems under changing aboveground and belowground inputs as consequence of climate and land management changes.