RESEARCH ARTICLE In Situ Persistence and Migration of Biochar Carbon and Its Impact on Native Carbon Emission in Contrasting Soils under Managed Temperate Pastures

Pyrogenic carbon (PyC) is an important component of the global soil carbon (C) pool, but its fate, persistence, and loss dynamics in contrasting soils and environments under planted field conditions are poorly understood. To fill this knowledge gap, a 13C-labelled biochar, as a surrogate material for PyC, produced from Eucalyptus saligna by slow pyrolysis (450°C; δ13C-36.7‰) was surface (0−10 cm) applied in C3 dominated temperate pasture systems across Arenosol, Cambisol and Ferralsol. The results show a low proportion of the applied biochar-C mineralised over 12 months in a relatively clay- and C-poor Arenosol (i.e., 2.0% loss via mineralisation), followed by a clay- and C-rich Cambisol (4.6%), and clay-, C- and earthworm-rich Ferralsol (7.0%). The biochar-C mean residence time (MRT), estimated by different models, varied between 44−1079 (Arenosol), 18−172 (Cambisol), and 11−29 (Fer-ralsol) years, with the shorter MRT estimated by a one-pool exponential and the longer MRT by an infinite-pool power or a two-pool exponential model. The two-pool model was best fitted to biochar-C mineralisation. The biochar-C recovery in the 12−30 cm soil layer varied from between 1.2 % (Arenosol), 2.5−2.7 % (Cambisol) and 13.8−15.7 % (Ferralsol) o