Here we respond to Baveye and colleagues' recent critique of our PROMISE model, describing how this new framework significantly advances our understanding of soil spatial heterogeneity and its influence on organic matter transformations.

Soils represent the largest terrestrial reservoir of organic carbon, and the balance between soil organic carbon (SOC) formation and loss will drive powerful carbon‐climate feedbacks over the coming century. To date, efforts to predict SOC dynamics have rested on pool‐based models, which assume classes of SOC with internally homogenous physicochemical properties. However, emerging evidence suggests that soil carbon turnover is...