**Abstract**

Soil is the largest carbon pool in the terrestrial ecosystem. Even small changes in the soil carbon pool would have huge impacts on atmospheric CO2 concentrations and thus mitigate or intensify global warming. Global forest contains 383 ± 30 × 1015 g carbon stock in soils to a 1-m depth, which is approximately 50% of the carbon stored in the atmosphere. Arid and semiarid areas with more than 30% of the world's land surface are characterized by low and sporadic moisture availability and sparse or discontinuous vegetation, both spatially and temporally. Vegetation, water, and nutrients are intimately coupled in the semiarid environments with strong feedbacks and interactions occurring across fine to coarse scales. In this chapter, we will review the cutting-edge work in forest soil carbon biogeochemistry undertaken in the last three decades. We also attempt to synthesize recent advances in soil carbon biogeochemistry in arid and semiarid regions and discuss future research needs and directions.

**Keywords:** carbon cycle, soil respiration, water, soil, ecological restoration
