Allow exhausted and marginal cropland to return to natural ecosystems. Through decomposition processes and accumulation of SOM, soils play a major role in determining the composition of the Earth s atmosphere. Therefore soil science has a major role to play in dealing with global warming. Soil organic matter is a major sink for carbon dioxide. Methane is another important greenhouse gas approximately 30 times more effective than CO 2 in trapping heat energy.
Soils serve as a source and sink for methane.
The enzyme responsible for catalyzing this reaction is methane monooxygenase. Long term use of nitrogen fertilizers reduces the capacity of soils to oxidze methane. Mined and sold commercially as containerized media. Decomposition is nearly complete and contains much more humus. Histisols characterized by 1.