Soil carbon "sequestration" is all the rage now a days, but very rarely does anyone define the time-frame of "sequester". Usually folks are only looking at changes to soil carbon *content*, and assuming those changes are permanent. They are not. Here we show that soil carbon *content* is de-coupled from how long that soil carbon stays in soil (i.e. having more carbon in soils does not necessary mean that carbon sticks around for longer periods of time).
Chicken or the egg. Grassland soil carbon behaves different than forest soil carbon. But is that because of the plant composition? (No). Or is it because of the climatic differences? (Probably) But if the climatic differences *also* lead to vegetation differences, then how can you separate out the climate from the vegetation? Here we attempt to do so.
Spodosols are the **most** photogenic soils *(personal opinion)*. Their dark organic surface horizons, followed by a light colored mineral horizon, then bookend-ed with another very dark - often red - mineral horizon makes these tri-colored soils magnificent to stare at. These Spodosols are relatively rare, but concentrated in a few places in the US where historical anthropogenic emissions are the most likely sources of Mercury. In this paper we focus on different Spodosols around the US, combining pedologic and geochemical analysis to identify how carbon and mercury interact down the soil profile.