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than afforestation/reforestation, and con- Recent advances in plant-based strategies ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
verting grasslands to forest may yield less have also provided new insights to address This article was supported by the National Science
net SOC storage than converting cropland net SOC loss. These strategies rely on the Foundation (EAR 1623812) and University of Califor-
nia Merced and Falasco Endowed Chair to AAB; and
to forest (Li et al., 2012; Bárcena et al., ability of plants to self-regulate and self- University of California Merced Chancellor’s Post-
2014). Soil restoration, specifically for optimize resource uptake and allocation, and doctoral Fellowship and the National Research Foun-
wetlands, has the potential to return these thus are considered cost-effective and sus- dation of Korea (MSIT, NRF-2018R1A5A7025409) to
environments to a net C sink (Table 1; tainable with limited environmental foot- KM. Icons used in Figure 1 made by Freepik and Flat
Waddington et al., 2010) and represents a prints. Plant roots are known to be a main Icons, from www.flaticon.com.
cost-efficient mitigation strategy—projected source of SOC (Rasse et al., 2005), and root-
to cost ~US$20 per Mg of sequestered C derived SOC is preferentially retained by REFERENCES CITED
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