temperature-response-soil-organic-matter-decomposition-rates

Temperature Response of Soil Organic Matter Decomposition Rates: Construction and Applications of a Temperature Gradient Block

Soil is the Earth's largest carbon (C) reservoir, holding nearly twice as much C as the atmosphere. Climate change-induced temperature increases could ...

Wageningen University & Research

Evaluation of the temperature sensitivity of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition is critical for forecasting whether soils in a warming world will lose or gain carbon and, therefore, accelerate or mitigate climate warming. It is usually described, using Arrhenius kinetics, as increasing with the stability of the substrate in laboratory conditions, where substrate availability is non-limiting and where chemical recalcitrance, therefore, predominantly regulates stability. However, conditions of non-limiting subtrate availability are rare in the undisturbed soil, where physicochemical protection of substrates may control their stability. The aim of this study was to assess the temperature sensitivity of decomposition of SOM with contrasting stability in the field. Our conceptual approach was based on in situ measurements of soil CO efflux at a range of temperatures from root exclusion plots of increasing age (1 month and three decades) and, therefore, with SOM of increasing stability. From a set of short-term measurements in spring, using diurnal temperature variation, the relative temperature sensitivity of SOM decomposition decreased significantly (p < 0.0001) with increasing SOM stability, and was weak (Q < 1.3) in long-term root exclusion plots. This result was confirmed in a similar set of short-term measurements repeated later in the year, in summer, as well as from an analysis perfomed at the seasonal timscale. We provide direct field evidence that the temperature sensitivity of SOM decomposition decreases with increasing stability, in direct contrast with Arrhenius kinetics prediction, and therefore show that stability of SOM in the field cannot be the sole result of chemical recalcitrance. We conclude that the physicochemical protection of SOM, which controls SOM stability in the field, constrains the temperature sensitivity of SOM decomposition under field conditions.

Temperature sensitivity of decomposition decreases with increasing soil organic matter stability.

Climate warming may be exacerbated if rising temperatures stimulate losses of soil carbon to the atmosphere. The direction and magnitude of this carbon-climate feedback are uncertain, largely due to lack of knowledge of the thermal adaptation of the physiology and composition of soil microbial communities. Here, we applied the macromolecular rate theory (MMRT) to describe the temperature response of the microbial decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) in a natural long-term warming experiment in a geothermally active area in New Zealand. Our objective was to test whether microbial communities adapt to long-term warming with a shift in their composition and their temperature response that are consistent with evolutionary theory of trade-offs between enzyme structure and function. We characterized the microbial community composition (using metabarcoding) and the temperature response of microbial decomposition of SOM (using MMRT) of soils sampled along transects of increasing distance from a geothermally active zone comprising two biomes (a shrubland and a grassland) and sampled at two depths (0-50 and 50-100 mm), such that ambient soil temperature and soil carbon concentration varied widely and independently. We found that the different environments were hosting microbial communities with distinct compositions, with thermophile and thermotolerant genera increasing in relative abundance with increasing ambient temperature. However, the ambient temperature had no detectable influence on the MMRT parameters or the relative temperature sensitivity of decomposition (Q ). MMRT parameters were, however, strongly correlated with soil carbon concentration and carbon:nitrogen ratio. Our findings suggest that, while long-term warming selects for warm-adapted taxa, substrate quality and quantity exert a stronger influence than temperature in selecting for distinct thermal traits. The results have major implications for our understanding of the role of soil microbial processes in the long-term effects of climate warming on soil carbon dynamics and will help increase confidence in carbon-climate feedback projections.

Article	Year
Temperature sensitivity of decomposition decreases with increasing soil organic matter stability. The Science of the total environment\| PubMed ID: 31812385	2020
Soil microbial sensitivity to temperature remains unchanged despite community compositional shifts along geothermal gradients. Global change biology\| PubMed ID: 34585498	2021
Climate change mitigation through soil carbon sequestration in working lands: A reality check. Global change biology\| PubMed ID: 37965790	2024

Gabriel Y. K. Moinet

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