Significant accrual of soil organic carbon through long-term rice cultivation in paddy fields in China

Paddy fields serve as significant reservoirs of soil organic carbon (SOC) and their potential for terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration is closely associated with changes in SOC pools. However, there has been a dearth of comprehensive studies quantifying changes in SOC pools following extended periods of rice cultivation across a broad geographical scale. Using 104 rice paddy sampling sites that have been in continuous cultivation since the 1980s across China, we studied the changes in topsoil (0–20 cm) labile organic C (LOC I), semi-labile organic C (LOC II), recalcitrant organic C (ROC), and total SOC. We found a substantial increase in both the content (48%) and density (39%) of total SOC within China's paddy fields between the 1980s to the 2010s. Intriguingly, the rate of increase in content and density of ROC exceeded that of LOC (I and II). Using a structural equation model, we revealed that changes in the content and density of total SOC were mainly driven by corresponding shifts in ROC, which are influenced both directly and indirectly by climatic and soil physicochemical factors; in particular temperature, precipitation, phosphorous (P) and clay content. We also showed that the δ¹³C_LOC were greater than δ¹³C_ROC, independent of the rice cropping region, and that there was a significant positive correlation between δ¹³C_SOC and δ¹³C_straw. The δ¹³C_LOC and δ¹³C_SOC showed significantly negative correlation with soil total Si, suggesting that soil Si plays a part in the allocation of C into different SOC pools, and its turnover or stabilization. Our study underscores that the global C sequestration of the paddy fields mainly stems from the substantial increase in ROC pool.