Donc apparemment, l’#humus n’existerait pas, mais serait le résultat du traitement alcalin utilisé pour mesurer le taux d’humus. Il n’y aurait pas cet état stable qu’est l’humus mais plutôt un continuum de décomposition.
L’étude
▻http://www.nature.com.sci-hub.cc/nature/journal/v528/n7580/full/nature16069.html
Les conclusions de Toby Hemenway
▻https://www.facebook.com/toby.hemenway/posts/1206143842763600
Some amazing news on the soil science front. Humus doesn’t exist. Several recent articles are showing that humic and fulvic acids and many of the other humic components of soil are artifacts of the alkaline treatment that is used to measure humus content, and don’t, in fact, exist in untreated soil. When OM is measured using non-destructive methods such as NMR spectroscopy, no humic compounds can be found. Organic matter does not degrade into “stable” humic components, it simply decomposes into a continuum of smaller and smaller carbon compounds. There is constant, slow turnover of carbon in soils, not a semi-permanent trapping of carbon into “humus.” Humus, meaning a stable form of carbon visualized by alkaline extraction, seems not to exist. It’s an artifact of the lab method. This is kind of blow-away news for those of us who teach soil science—and it’s a good lesson on how the methods we use determines what we see. Teachers, start revising how you teach soils, and stop talking about humus.
