Reduced CO2 Release from Arctic Soils Due to CO2 Binding to Calcium Forming Aragonite

Arctic soils are the largest pool of organic carbon compared with other soils globally and serve as a main source for greenhouse gases, especially in the course of the predicted future temperature increase. With increasing temperatures, substantial thawing of the permafrost layer of soils is expected, altering the availability of calcium in those soils, with an increase by ∼5 mg Ca g^–1 DW predicted for Alaska. Here we show for two representative soils in Alaska (initially Ca-poor or Ca-rich) that this increase in Ca availability will lead to decreases in CO₂ release by 50% and 57%. It is already well-known that the cation bridging of Ca ions to organic carbon renders this carbon unavailable for microbial respiration and that Ca is altering the transformation of C_org by microbes. Here we show that the decrease of the soil CO₂ release may be also due to enhanced aragonite formation (by 300% for Ca-poor and 90–200% for Ca-rich soils), as revealed by synchrotron-based scanning transmission X-ray microscopy. We therefore call upon field experiments for validation of this process and inclusion of this process in global and local carbon budget models.