Seppelt, AnikaMolina Valero, Juan AlbertoPérez Cruzado, CésarBarros Pena, Nieves2023-03-142023-03-142023Environmental Research 222 (2023) 1153100013-9351http://hdl.handle.net/10347/30306Studying the thermodynamic properties of soil organic matter is a developing field that involves the measurement of the energy stored by the soil. Quantifying soil energy content is still challenging despite different methodological approaches are available to calculate that value. One of the options is the proximate analysis following the guidelines for the energetic characterization of biomass. However, proximate analyses are still unexplored for soils. In this paper, we investigate the potential of this analysis to contribute to study soil from a thermodynamic perspective. With that goal, 31 soil samples collected in mature oak forests following a depth transect were used for elemental, thermal and proximate analysis. Proximate analyses and energetic characterization were performed by simultaneous thermogravimetry and differential scanning calorimetryeng© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync- nd/4.0/)Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/SoilThermal analysisProximate analysisEnergyjournal article10.1016/j.envres.2023.115310open access