Book review: "Soil Carbon"

Hartemink, A.E. & McSweeney, K. (eds). Soil Carbon. Springer Cham, Heidelberg, Germany, 2014. xxvi + 506 pp. £93. Hardcover. ISBN 978-3-319-04083-7. This book has been written by contributors to the IUSS Global Soil Carbon Conference held in Madison, USA, in June 2013. It is more than a collection of conference papers as it aims to present ‘the wide array of research that has been conducted on soil carbon in all parts of the world, and at all scales’. The papers demonstrate soil carbon as an indicator of soil quality and the potential of soil carbon for mitigating climate change. The book is in four sections, and the reader can chose to read it as an entity or, instead, to select specific parts. The first chapter in each section overviews the contexts by which the different aspects of soil carbon are discussed, introduces fundamental concepts and the reasons for associating soil carbon with environmental and management issues.