Stabilization of Organic Matter by Interactions with Iron Oxides: Relative Importance of Sorption vs. Aggregation

Persistence of organic matter in soil is largely determined by the environmental conditions that organic compounds encounter in the environment. The most important stabilization mechanisms for carbon in soil include chemical and physical association of organic compounds with soil minerals. However, to date, we don't have a complete understanding of the relative contribution of each process to carbon stabilization, especially under different soil conditions. To develop better process-level understanding of these stabilization mechanisms, the relative importance of chemical vs. physical mechanisms of carbon stabilization facilitated by iron oxides at different soil solution conditions using a variety of advanced approaches including electron microscopy and infrared spectroscopy is determined. Our preliminary results suggest that aggregation may be the dominant process in mineral-organic associations. These results improve our understanding of factors that regulate persistence of organic matter in soil system.