QUALITY - A BRIDGE BETWEEN THEORY AND EXPERIMENT IN SOIL ORGANIC-MATTER STUDIES

The abstract concept ''quality'' was introduced by us ten years ago to formalise the dynamics of C, N, P, and S in soil organic matter. We p resent here an interpretation of decomposition studies of 19 different litter types performed at 16 different localities and including a tot al of 978 observations in terms of the continuous quality theory showi ng how quality can be estimated from conventional chemical fractionati on. This provides us with a powerful tool to unify our understanding o f the physical-chemical-biological complex behind the processes contro lling soil organic matter dynamics.