Dataset Information

Soil respiration of four forests along elevation gradient in northern subtropical China.

ABSTRACT:

Background and aims

Soil respiration is the second-largest terrestrial carbon (C) flux, and soil temperature and soil moisture are the main drivers of temporal variation in soil respiration and its components. Here, we quantified the contribution of soil temperature, soil moisture, and their intersection on the variation in soil respiration and its components of the evergreen broad-leaved forests (EBF), mixed evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved forests (MF), deciduous broad-leaved forests (DBF), and subalpine coniferous forests (CF) along an elevation gradient.

Methods

We measured soil respiration of four types of forests along the elevation gradient in Shennongjia, Hubei China based on the trenching experiments. We parameterized the relationships between soil respiration and soil temperature, soil moisture, and quantified the intersection of temperature and moisture on soil respiration and its components.

Results

Total soil respiration (R _S), heterotrophic respiration (R _H), and autotrophic respiration (R _A) were significantly correlated with soil temperature in all four forests. The Q ₁₀ value of soil respiration significantly differed among the four types of forest, and the Q ₁₀ was 3.06 for EBF, 3.75 for MF, 4.05 for DBF, and 4.49 for CF, respectively. The soil temperature explained 62%-81% of the variation in respiration, while soil temperature and soil moisture together explained 91%-97% of soil respiration variation for the four types of forests. The variation from the intersection of soil temperature and moisture were 12.1%-25.0% in R_S, 1.0%-7.0% in R _H, and 17.1%-19.6% in R _A, respectively.

Conclusions

Our results show that the temperature sensitivity (Q ₁₀) of soil respiration increased with elevation. The intersection between soil temperature and soil moisture had strong effects on soil respiration, especially in R _H. We demonstrated that the intersection effects between soil temperature and soil moisture on soil respiration were essential to understand the response of soil respiration and its components to climate change.

SUBMITTER: Ma M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6875676 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Soil respiration of four forests along elevation gradient in northern subtropical China.

Ma Mingzhe M Zang Zhenhua Z Xie Zongqiang Z Chen Quansheng Q Xu Wenting W Zhao Changming C Shen Guozhen G

Ecology and evolution 20191106 22

<h4>Background and aims</h4>Soil respiration is the second-largest terrestrial carbon (C) flux, and soil temperature and soil moisture are the main drivers of temporal variation in soil respiration and its components. Here, we quantified the contribution of soil temperature, soil moisture, and their intersection on the variation in soil respiration and its components of the evergreen broad-leaved forests (EBF), mixed evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved forests (MF), deciduous broad-leaved fores ...[more]

PMID: 31788219

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Project description:1. The Andes are predicted to warm by 3-5 °C this century with the potential to alter the processes regulating carbon (C) cycling in these tropical forest soils. This rapid warming is expected to stimulate soil microbial respiration and change plant species distributions, thereby affecting the quantity and quality of C inputs to the soil and influencing the quantity of soil-derived CO2 released to the atmosphere. 2. We studied tropical lowland, premontane and montane forest soils taken from along a 3200-m elevation gradient located in south-east Andean Peru. We determined how soil microbial communities and abiotic soil properties differed with elevation. We then examined how these differences in microbial composition and soil abiotic properties affected soil C-cycling processes, by amending soils with C substrates varying in complexity and measuring soil heterotrophic respiration (RH). 3. Our results show that there were consistent patterns of change in soil biotic and abiotic properties with elevation. Microbial biomass and the abundance of fungi relative to bacteria increased significantly with elevation, and these differences in microbial community composition were strongly correlated with greater soil C content and C:N (nitrogen) ratios. We also found that RH increased with added C substrate quality and quantity and was positively related to microbial biomass and fungal abundance. 4. Statistical modelling revealed that RH responses to changing C inputs were best predicted by soil pH and microbial community composition, with the abundance of fungi relative to bacteria, and abundance of gram-positive relative to gram-negative bacteria explaining much of the model variance. 5. Synthesis. Our results show that the relative abundance of microbial functional groups is an important determinant of RH responses to changing C inputs along an extensive tropical elevation gradient in Andean Peru. Although we do not make an experimental test of the effects of climate change on soil, these results challenge the assumption that different soil microbial communities will be 'functionally equivalent' as climate change progresses, and they emphasize the need for better ecological metrics of soil microbial communities to help predict C cycle responses to climate change in tropical biomes.

Dataset Information

Soil respiration of four forests along elevation gradient in northern subtropical China.

Background and aims

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Soil respiration of four forests along elevation gradient in northern subtropical China.

Similar Datasets

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