Soil organic matter (SOM) anchors global terrestrial productivity and food and fiber supply. SOM retains water and soil nutrients and stores more global carbon than do plants and the atmosphere combined. SOM is also decomposed by microbes, returning CO 2 , a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, soil carbon stocks have been widely lost or degraded through land use changes and unsustainable forest and agricultural practices.

Improved quantification of the factors controlling soil organic matter (SOM) stabilization at continental to global scales is needed to inform projections of the largest actively cycling terrestrial carbon pool on Earth, and its response to environmental change. Biogeochemical models rely almost exclusively on clay content to modify rates of SOM turnover and fluxes of climate-active CO 2 to the atmosphere. Emerging conceptual understanding, however, suggests other soil physicochemical properties may predict SOM stabilization better than clay content. We addressed this discrepancy by synthesizing data from over 5,500 soil profiles spanning continental scale environmental gradients. Here, we demonstrate that other physicochemical parameters are much stronger predictors of SOM content, with clay content having relatively little explanatory power. We show that exchangeable calcium strongly predicted SOM content in water-limited, alkaline soils, whereas with increasing moisture availability and acidity, iron-and aluminum-oxyhydroxides emerged as better predictors, demonstrating that the relative importance of SOM stabilization mechanisms scales with climate and acidity. These results highlight the urgent need to modify biogeochemical models to

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Summary 1.We separated the effects of plant species controls on decomposition rates from environmental controls in northern peatlands using a full factorial, reciprocal transplant experiment of eight dominant bryophytes in four distinct peatland types in boreal Alberta, Canada. Standard fractionation techniques as well as compound-specific pyrolysis molecular beam mass spectrometry were used to identify a biochemical mechanism underlying any interspecific differences in decomposition rates. 2. We found that over a 3-year field incubation, individual moss species and not micro-environmental conditions controlled early stages of decomposition. Across species, Sphagnum mosses exhibited a trade-off in resource partitioning into metabolic and structural carbohydrates, a pattern that served as a strong predictor of litter decomposition. 3. Decomposition rates showed a negative co-variation between species and their microtopographic position, as species that live in hummocks decomposed slowly but hummock microhabitats themselves corresponded to rapid decomposition rates. By forming litter that degrades slowly, hummock mosses appear to promote the maintenance of macropore structure in surface peat hummocks that aid in water retention. 4. Synthesis . Many northern regions are experiencing rapid climate warming that is expected to accelerate the decomposition of large soil carbon pools stored within peatlands. However, our results suggest that some common peatland moss species form tissue that resists decomposition across a range of peatland environments, suggesting that moss resource allocation could stabilize peatland carbon losses under a changing climate.