Humification and nonhumification pathways of the organic matter stabilization in soil: A review

Polymeric and supramolecular models of humic substances (HSs) are considered. It has been noted that the HSs in natural objects can simultaneously occur in the forms of macromolecular polymers and supramolecularly organized monomers; macromolecular polymers of HSs can have some properties of suprastructures or be associated into aggregates, and covalent bonds can be formed between the monomers of supramolecules. Mineral particles of soil act as catalysts in chemical reactions between individual compounds, sorbents of biomolecules, and a surface for self-assembling HSs. It is supposed that the combination of such physicochemical processes and phenomena in soil as cementation, charring, incrustation, occlusion, sedimentation, sorption, coagulation, flocculation, encapsulation, complexation, and intercalation, as well as the entrapment of macroorganic, particulate, and soluble organic substances in micropores, can be as important for the stabilization of organic matter as the interactions between biomolecules with the formation of HSs.