Dataset Information

Soil invertebrate diversity loss and functional changes in temperate forest soils replaced by exotic pine plantations.

ABSTRACT: The global expansion of tree plantations is often claimed to have positive effects for mitigating global warming, preventing soil erosion, and reducing biodiversity loss. However, questions remain unanswered about the impacts of plantations on belowground diversity and soil properties. Here, we examine how forestry plantations of exotic trees affect critical soil functions and the composition of invertebrate assemblages, by comparing invertebrate diversity and soil physico-chemical properties between non-native Pinus radiata plantations, and nearby native forests in a region of extensive plantation activity in south-central Chile. We quantified differences in diversity, abundance, and community composition of soil invertebrates, as well as fundamental soil properties such as soil water content, water infiltration, nutrient status, and pH. We show that in this landscape mosaic of native forest and plantations, both soil invertebrate communities and physical soil properties differed significantly between systems, despite similar soil origins and topographies. We found a significant loss of soil carbon and a major reduction in taxonomic and functional diversity of soil invertebrates in pine plantation sites. Soil biotic and abiotic characteristics of plantations differed significantly from native forests in plantation-dominated south-central Chile, with profound consequences for ecosystem processes and resilience to future climate change.

SUBMITTER: Cifuentes-Croquevielle C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7210289 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Soil invertebrate diversity loss and functional changes in temperate forest soils replaced by exotic pine plantations.

Cifuentes-Croquevielle Camila C Stanton Daniel E DE Armesto Juan J JJ

Scientific reports 20200508 1

The global expansion of tree plantations is often claimed to have positive effects for mitigating global warming, preventing soil erosion, and reducing biodiversity loss. However, questions remain unanswered about the impacts of plantations on belowground diversity and soil properties. Here, we examine how forestry plantations of exotic trees affect critical soil functions and the composition of invertebrate assemblages, by comparing invertebrate diversity and soil physico-chemical properties be ...[more]

PMID: 32385353

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Project description:As Earth's climate warms, soil carbon pools and the microbial communities that process them may change, altering the way in which carbon is recycled in soil. In this study, we used a combination of metagenomics and bacterial cultivation to evaluate the hypothesis that experimentally raising soil temperatures by 5°C for 5, 8, or 20 years increased the potential for temperate forest soil microbial communities to degrade carbohydrates. Warming decreased the proportion of carbohydrate-degrading genes in the organic horizon derived from eukaryotes and increased the fraction of genes in the mineral soil associated with Actinobacteria in all studies. Genes associated with carbohydrate degradation increased in the organic horizon after 5 years of warming but had decreased in the organic horizon after warming the soil continuously for 20 years. However, a greater proportion of the 295 bacteria from 6 phyla (10 classes, 14 orders, and 34 families) isolated from heated plots in the 20-year experiment were able to depolymerize cellulose and xylan than bacterial isolates from control soils. Together, these findings indicate that the enrichment of bacteria capable of degrading carbohydrates could be important for accelerated carbon cycling in a warmer world.ImportanceThe massive carbon stocks currently held in soils have been built up over millennia, and while numerous lines of evidence indicate that climate change will accelerate the processing of this carbon, it is unclear whether the genetic repertoire of the microbes responsible for this elevated activity will also change. In this study, we showed that bacteria isolated from plots subject to 20 years of 5°C of warming were more likely to depolymerize the plant polymers xylan and cellulose, but that carbohydrate degradation capacity is not uniformly enriched by warming treatment in the metagenomes of soil microbial communities. This study illustrates the utility of combining culture-dependent and culture-independent surveys of microbial communities to improve our understanding of the role changing microbial communities may play in soil carbon cycling under climate change.

Dataset Information

Soil invertebrate diversity loss and functional changes in temperate forest soils replaced by exotic pine plantations.

Publications

Soil invertebrate diversity loss and functional changes in temperate forest soils replaced by exotic pine plantations.

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