International Symposium on Soil Organic Matter 2011
Organic matter dynamics – from soils to oceans

As a follow-up to the meetings in Poitiers (France, 2007) and Colorado Springs (USA, 2009), the third international symposium on organic matter dynamics will be held in Leuven, Belgium in 2011.

While the general scope will remain on soil organic matter dynamics in various ecosystems and in particular on its relationship with climate change, some additional aspects will be emphasized in the present symposium. In view of the largely unexplored relationships between different components in the landscape and their impact on organic carbon dynamics, the exchange between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems will be an important symposium theme. Carbon in surface waters after all is in part originating from soils and hence a description of global carbon dynamics can not be complete without equally detailed research of carbon dynamics in aquatic environments.

A second point of interest resides in carbon studies of tropical agro-ecosystems. The difficulties to maintain or build-up soil organic carbon stocks in tropical agro-ecosystems is a long standing problem in soil science and/or agronomy. We deliberately encourage contributions from scientists with research on and pragmatical solutions to sequester carbon in tropical systems without compromising food production.