page_title: Soil carbon
section_title: Soil health
hierarchical_section_title: Soil carbon / Organic carbon / Soil health
caption_attribution_description: English: SRS1000 being used to measure soil respiration in the field.
context_page_description: Soil carbon refers to the solid terrestrial matter stored in global soils. This includes both soil organic matter and inorganic carbon as carbonate minerals. Soil carbon is a carbon sink in regard to the global carbon cycle, playing a role in biogeochemistry, climate change mitigation, and constructing global climate models.
context_section_description: Organic carbon is vital to soil capacity to provide edaphic ecosystem services. The condition of this capacity is termed soil health, a term that communicates the value of understanding soil as a living system as opposed to an abiotic component. Specific carbon related benchmarks used to evaluate soil health include CO₂ release, humus levels, and microbial metabolic activity.
caption: A portable soil respiration system measuring soil CO2 flux
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