Over the past 100 years numerous studies have been conducted with the goal of quantifying the impact of management on carbon turnover. It is difficult to conduct a mechanistic evaluation of these studies because each study was conducted under unique soil, climatic, and management conditions.  Techniques for directly comparing data from unique studies are needed. This study discusses techniques for comparing data collected from different studies and the impact of different assumption on carbon turnover kinetics.  Analysis showed that: 1) in spite of the difficulty in measuring below ground biomass, it is needed to calculate the SOC and NHC mineralization rate constants when using non-isotopic C-budget calculation approaches; 2) decreasing NHC by reducing the relative contribution of roots to NHC, reduced the SOC maintenance requirements and the amount of non-harvested C that could be sustainably removed; 3) the NHC calculation approach impacted K_NHC and K_SOC rate constants; 4) K_SOC rate constant may increase with tillage intensity; and 5) K_SOC and K_NHC can be used to assess the impact of different management scenarios on carbon turnover. Findings suggest that the accuracy of SOC turnover calculations could be improved by including no-plant controls areas and using appropriate techniques to measure below ground biomass.