Trends in soil carbon dynamics in restoration areas: A time-based analysis of controlling factors

The carbon retained by terrestrial ecosystems is essential to mitigating extreme events triggered by climate change. The conversion of degraded areas through restoration is an operationally and financially effective strategy that significantly increases the carbon stored in the plant compartment. The soil layer up to 1 m deep incorporates C at lower rates but can store three times more than the atmosphere and four times more than vegetation in the long term. Having exposed the problem, the systematic review is guided internationally by the “Decade of Ecosystem Restoration 2021 – 2030”, and by Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 13: Climate Action and SDG 15: Life on Land, highlights the themes in the scientific field from past studies and trends for new approaches in future studies. The Web of Science database was selected, given the criteria of global academic relevance, multidisciplinary, abundance of works, and availability of access through the CAPES Periodicals platform. A set of Boolean operators was inserted in the Title, Abstract, and Keywords search fields: soil carbon, soil organic carbon, SOC, carbon soil, organic matter, forest restoration, ecological restoration, soil rehabilitation, soil recovery, revegetation, land restoration, degraded land, degraded soil. The data were exported in plain text (.RIS) and imported by the VOS viewer 1.6.20 software for bibliometric and visual analysis. A total of 10.465 articles were published from 1977 to 2025. Most of the studies were published by authors from China (22,2 %) and from USA (17,6 %). Brazil represented 3%, occupying 6th place. The year with the most publications on the topic was 2024 (12,2%). Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Ecology represented 59 % of published articles. The journals that obtained the highest number of publications were Geoderma, Soil Biology Biochemistry, and Soil Science Society of America Journal, totaling 2604 articles (14,5 %). The growing interest in soil carbon assessment was evidenced by the increase in the number of articles published in the last four years. In the context of ecological restoration and soil carbon in the previous four years, the approaches were more directed to soil fauna and enzymatic activity, linking with the structure and stability of organic matter. Even so, our review highlights persistent bottlenecks and unresolved questions regarding both restoration trajectories and the factors governing soil carbon dynamics.
This study was financed in part by the Rio de Janeiro Research Foundation (FAPERJ) E-26/200.452/2025, and funded by the grant E-26/200.451/2025.