Dear Colleagues,

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a critical component in the global carbon cycle. Soil is the largest carbon reservoir in terrestrial ecosystems, and SOC storage accounts for about 62% of the global soil carbon pool. Thus, even small changes in SOC pools could have dramatic impacts on water supply and climate change. With the continuous socio-economic development, land use and land cover (LUCC) have massive changes at the local, regional, or global scales. The dynamic of LUCC could directly impact ecological processes such as water circulation, carbon, and nitrogen cycles, as well as ecosystem services, especially with significant effects on SOC dynamics. A large proportion of terrestrial land has experienced significant carbon loss over the past decades due to inappropriate anthropogenic activities. It is reported that LUCC changes such as intensive reclamation and grazing, excessive mining, and over-cutting, lead to about 23% of the total net anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gas. Human activities could also improve soil carbon sequestration through ecological restoration or protective tillage. However, it is still unclear whether the effect of LUCC changes SOC dynamics and storages at local, regional, and global scales in the past, present, and future. Moreover, research on exploring the relationships between LUCC change and SOC could help to achieve sustainable development goals and carbon neutrality.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to give insights into the impacts of land use and land cover change on soil organic carbon and to scientifically contribute to the Carbon Neutrality and Sustainable Development Goals.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

• Patterns and stocks of SOC at local, regional, and global scales;
• Carbon cycle processes at different time scales (Millennium to daily time scale);
• LUCC change and its drivers in the past, present and future;
• Effects of LUCC change on SOC dynamic and storage;
• Mechanism of LUCC change on SOC dynamic and storage;
• Predictions of future SOC storages effected by land use change;
• Uncertainties of SOC storage changes affected by LUCC;
• Digital mapping on SOC density or storage;
• Assessments of methods, models, frameworks, and other tools;
• Other related research.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Jutao Zhang
Dr. Meng Zhu
Dr. Chengqi Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• soil organic carbon
• land use and land cover
• remote sensing
• SOC dynamic/storage
• anthropogenic activities
• land rehabilitation/restoration
• climate change
• spatiotemporal analysis
• land management
• deep learning/Historical modeling