Molecular level analysis of long term vegetative shifts and relationships to soil organic matter composition

•Vegetation and soil organic matter compositional differences were studied.•Soils from a native prairie and from planted cedar and pine stands were analyzed.•Aliphatic compounds are preferentially preserved under pine vegetation.•Lignin oxidation suggests that prairie carbon is more preserved under cedar stands.•Long term vegetation shifts may alter the biogeochemistry of soil organic matter. Soil organic matter (SOM) is one of the earth’s largest reservoirs of actively cycled carbon and plays a critical role in various ecosystem functions. In this study, mineral soils with the same parent material and of similar approximate age were sampled from the same climatic region in Halsey, Nebraska to determine the relationship between overlying vegetation inputs to SOM composition using complementary molecular level methods (biomarker analyses and solid state 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy). Soil samples were collected from a native prairie and cedar and pine sites planted on the native prairie. Free and bound lipids isolated from the pine soil were more enriched in aliphatic and cutin-derived compounds than the other two soils. Cinnamyl type lignin-derived phenols were more abundant in the grassland soil than in the pine and cedar soils. Acid to aldehyde ratios (Ad/Al) for vanillyl and syringyl type phenols were higher for the pine soil indicating a more advanced stage of lignin oxidation (also observed by 13C NMR) in the soil that has also been reported to have accelerated carbon loss. In agreement with the more abundant aliphatic lipids and cutin-derived compounds, solid state 13C NMR results also indicated that the SOM of the pine soil may have received more aliphatic carbon inputs or may have lost other components during enhanced decomposition. The observed relationship between vegetation and SOM composition may have important implications for global carbon cycling as some structures (e.g. aliphatics) are hypothesized to be more recalcitrant compared to others and their accumulation in soils may enhance below ground carbon storage.