A Radiocarbon-Based Framework to Assess Soil Organic Carbon Persistence and Vulnerability Across Land-Use Types

Soil organic carbon (SOC) can persist from days to millennia but remains vulnerable to carbon (C) loss upon disturbances, depending on environmental conditions and mode of stabilization. Understanding drivers of persistence and vulnerability is crucial to assess soil C sequestration as well as potential SOC losses due to changes in climate and land use. Here, we investigate SOC persistence and vulnerability in five land-use types by combining radiocarbon-derived estimates of SOC age (system age) and age of respired CO₂ (transit time) with indicators of biological (SOC decomposability) and thermal stability (residual oxidisable carbon content, ROC). Based on this, we developed a vulnerability index for SOC and applied it across soil profiles from 19 sites representing temperate and alpine grasslands, forests, croplands, and managed peatlands. Transit times and system ages ranged from 2 years in the organic layer of forests to 5760 years in subsoils of managed peatlands and varied significantly across land-use types and soil depth. Transit times were generally shorter than system ages, indicating that soil-respired CO₂ is dominated by more recent inputs, while bulk SOC contains more persistent C. In forests, temperate grasslands, and croplands, system ages were positively linked to thermal stability and mineral reactivity, indicating higher SOC persistence through organo-mineral stabilization. In contrast, alpine grasslands and managed peatlands showed centennial to millennial system ages despite low thermal stability (< 10%-ROC), reflecting inhibited microbial decomposition due to cold and/or anaerobic conditions in these ecosystems. In combination with high SOC stocks (> 90 kg m^-2 in managed peatlands), this implies a high vulnerability of these soils to environmental disturbances that alleviate these constraints. Our findings demonstrate that combining metrics of biological and thermal stability with radiocarbon data provides a powerful framework to assess SOC vulnerability to disturbances induced by environmental change.