Abstract
Land use and cover changes (LULCC) have profoundly influenced global soil organic carbon (SOC) stock, yet SOC responses to LULCC are among the largest but least quantified uncertainties in estimating land carbon emissions. Here we comprehensively estimated the LULCC-induced SOC changes over the past century using data from three widely recognized model inter-comparison projects. A refined multi-dimensional diagnostic framework was employed to dissect the underlying processes governing SOC changes following LULCC. Results revealed notable discrepancies among models. Despite varying magnitudes, soil carbon residence time consistently contributed negatively to LULCC-induced SOC changes. Conversely, net primary productivity (NPP)-driven SOC changes emerged as the largest source of uncertainty, predominantly fueling SOC gains in some model ensembles but depletion in others. Our findings underscore the need to better constrain simulated NPP and soil turnover processes to improve the accuracy of LULCC-induced SOC change predictions, pivotal for advancing global carbon management and climate mitigation strategies.
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Data availability
The Hurtt-SYNMAP land-use dataset used in MsTMIP is provided by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC, http://daac.ornl.gov). The LUH2v2 land-use dataset, utilized in LUMIP and TRENDYv9, is available on the LUH2 website (https://luh.umd.edu). Raw model outputs for MsTMIP and LUMIP are publicly accessible online (MsTMIP: http://daac.ornl.gov; LUMIP: https://aims2.llnl.gov/search/ cmip6). TRENDY model outputs can be obtained upon request (https://globalcarbonbudgetdata.org/closed-access-requests.html). The post-processed data generated in this study are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14866783.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2024YFF1306504) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31602004). We extend our sincere gratitude to the China Scholarship Council for financial support, and to all the modeling groups from MsTMIP, LUMIP, and TRENDY version 9, as listed in Supplementary Tables 1–3, for sharing the datasets.
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C.G.: Conceptualization, data retrieval, formal analysis, draft, and funding acquisition. N.W.: Conceptualization, formal analysis, and draft. C.F.: Data retrieval, formal analysis, and review. H.X.: Data retrieval and review. H.L.: Data retrieval, visualization, and review. F.T.: Data retrieval and review. L.J.: Data retrieval and review. J.X.: Data retrieval and review. S.S.: Data retrieval and review. Y.L.: Conceptualization, review, and supervision.
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The authors declare no competing interests. Lifen Jiang is an Editorial Board Member for Communications Earth & Environment, but was not involved in the editorial review of, nor the decision to publish this article.
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Gang, C., Wei, N., Feng, C. et al. Net primary productivity orchestrates uncertainty sources driving global soil organic carbon under land use change.
Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03312-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03312-6
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