Exploring soil organic matter-mineral interactions: mechanistic insights at the nanometer and molecular length scales

With elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to anthropogenic emissions and disruption to the carbon cycle, the effects of climate change are being accelerated. Approximately 80% of Earth's terrestrial organic carbon is stored in soil, and the residence time of this carbon can range from hours to millenia. Understanding the dynamics of this carbon pool in the carbon cycle is crucial to both predicting climate and sustaining ecosystem services. Soil organic carbon is known to be strongly associated with high surface area clay minerals. The nature of these interactions is not well understood primarily due to the heterogeneity of soil, as much of the current knowledge relies on experiments that take a top-down approach using bulk experimental measurements. Our work seeks to probe physical, chemical, and molecular-level interactions at the organic-mineral interface using a bottom-up approach that …