Globally, soil organic matter (SOM) contains more than three times as much carbon as either the atmosphere or terrestrial vegetation. Yet it remains largely unknown why some SOM persists for ...millennia whereas other SOM decomposes readily--and this limits our ability to predict how soils will respond to climate change. Recent analytical and experimental advances have demonstrated that molecular structure alone does not control SOM stability: in fact, environmental and biological controls predominate. Here we propose ways to include this understanding in a new generation of experiments and soil carbon models, thereby improving predictions of the SOM response to global warming.
Pyrogenic carbon (PyC), the residue of an incomplete combustion of biomass, is considered as a carbon (C) sink due to its assumed stability in soil. PyC turnover time estimated using two modelling ...approaches, based on data from 16 published studies (n = 54) on PyC degradation, ranged from a decadal to centennial time scale, varying with initial biomass type, pyrolysis temperature, and incubation or field study. The average turnover time using a one-pool approach was 88 y, and the best estimate using a two-pool approach was 3 y for a fast-cycling pool and 870 y for a slow-cycling pool. Based on this meta-analysis, PyC cannot be assumed to persist in soils for thousands of years, and its use as a strategy for offsetting carbon emissions requires prudence and further research.
Abstract
Peatlands are an important carbon (C) reservoir storing one-third of global soil organic carbon (SOC), but little is known about the fate of these C stocks under climate change. Here, we ...examine the impact of warming and elevated atmospheric CO
2
concentration (eCO
2
) on the molecular composition of SOC to infer SOC sources (microbe-, plant- and fire-derived) and stability in a boreal peatland. We show that while warming alone decreased plant- and microbe-derived SOC due to enhanced decomposition, warming combined with eCO
2
increased plant-derived SOC compounds. We further observed increasing root-derived inputs (suberin) and declining leaf/needle-derived inputs (cutin) into SOC under warming and eCO
2
. The decline in SOC compounds with warming and gains from new root-derived C under eCO
2
, suggest that warming and eCO
2
may shift peatland C budget towards pools with faster turnover. Together, our results indicate that climate change may increase inputs and enhance decomposition of SOC potentially destabilising C storage in peatlands.
Pyrogenic organic matter (PyOM) plays an important role as a stable carbon (C) sink in the soils of terrestrial ecosystems. However, uncertainties remain about in situ turnover rates of fire-derived ...PyOM in soil, the main processes leading to PyOM-C and nitrogen (N) losses from the soil, and the role of N availability on PyOM cycling in soils. We measured PyOM and native soil organic carbon losses from the soil as carbon dioxide and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) using additions of highly 13C-labelled PyOM (2.03 atom %) and its precursor pinewood during 1 year in a temperate forest soil. The field experiment was carried out under ambient and increased mineral N deposition (+60 kg N-NH4NO3 ha−1 year−1). The results showed that after 1 year: (1) 0.5% of PyOM-C and 22% of wood-C were mineralized as CO2, leading to an estimated turnover time of 191 and 4 years, respectively; (2) the quantity of PyOM and wood lost as dissolved organic carbon was negligible (0.0004 ± 0.0003% and 0.022 ± 0.007% of applied-C, respectively); and (3) N additions decreased cumulative PyOM mineralization by 43%, but did not affect cumulative wood mineralization and did not affect the loss of DOC from PyOM or wood. We conclude that mineralization to CO2 was the main process leading to PyOM losses during the first year of mineralization in a forest soil, and that N addition can decrease PyOM-C cycling, while added N showed no effect on wood C cycling.
We aimed at demonstrating non-inferiority of bortezomib/cyclophosphamide/dexamethasone (VCD) compared to bortezomib/doxorubicin/dexamethasone (PAd) induction therapy with respect to very good partial ...response rates or better (⩾VGPR) in 504 newly diagnosed, transplant-eligible multiple myeloma patients. VCD was found to be non-inferior to PAd with respect to ⩾VGPR rates (37.0 versus 34.3%, P=0.001). The rates of progressive disease (PD) were 0.4% (VCD) versus 4.8% (PAd; P=0.003). In the PAd arm, 11 of 12 patients with PD had either renal impairment (creatinine ⩾2 mg/dl) at diagnosis or the cytogenetic abnormality gain 1q21, whereas no PD was observed in these subgroups in the VCD arm. Leukocytopenia/neutropenia (⩾3°) occurred more frequently in the VCD arm (35.2% versus 11.3%, P<0.001). Neuropathy rates (⩾2°) were higher in the PAd group (14.9 versus 8.4%, P=0.03). Serious adverse events, both overall and those related to thromboembolic events, were higher in the PAd group (32.7 versus 24.0%, P=0.04 and 2.8 versus 0.4%, P=0.04). Stem cell collection was not impeded by VCD. VCD is as effective as PAd in terms of achieving ⩾VGPR rates with fewer PD and has a favorable toxicity profile. Therefore, VCD is preferable to PAd as induction therapy.
Nitrogen (N) and warming effects on ecosystem carbon (C) budgets and stabilization are critical to understand as C sequestration is considered as a mechanism to offset anthropogenic CO2 emissions, ...which is important for accurately predicting ecosystem C sequestration and/or potential C loss, remaining controversial though. However, the relevant information, especially for the intervention of environmental controls on grassland soil, is limited in Tibetan Plateau (TP) regions. Here we used a 9-year two-way factorial experiment involving warming with open top chambers (+1.80 ∘C in the daytime and +0.77 ∘C in the nighttime at the soil surface) and multilevel nitrogen (N) enrichment treatments (0, 5, 10, and 15 gm-2yr-1) in the TP to investigate the changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) pool size and chemical structure. Nine-year warming treatment significantly decreased SOC stock in the Tibetan grassland. We observed decreasing SOC concentrations which may be related to changes in the C-degrading enzymes. Surprisingly, the SOC molecular structure remained unchanged in all N-enrichment and warmed plots, suggesting that both treatments had affected all forms of SOC, from simple and complex polymeric in a similar way. Our results suggest that long-term warming stimulates soil C loss but no preference in SOC loss with different chemical structures.
Soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics represent a persisting uncertainty in our understanding of the global carbon cycle. SOC storage is strongly linked to plant inputs via the formation of soil organic ...matter, but soil geochemistry also plays a critical role. In tropical soils with rapid SOC turnover, the association of organic matter with soil minerals is particularly important for stabilising SOC but projected increases in tropical forest productivity could trigger feedbacks that stimulate the release of stored SOC. Here, we demonstrate limited additional SOC storage after 13-15 years of experimentally doubled aboveground litter inputs in a lowland tropical forest. We combined biological, physical, and chemical methods to characterise SOC along a gradient of bioavailability. After 13 years of monthly litter addition treatments, most of the additional SOC was readily bioavailable and we observed no increase in mineral-associated SOC. Importantly, SOC with weak association to soil minerals declined in response to long-term litter addition, suggesting that increased plant inputs could modify the formation of organo-mineral complexes in tropical soils. Hence, we demonstrate the limited capacity of tropical soils to sequester additional C inputs and provide insights into potential underlying mechanisms.
On 14 September 2015, a gravitational wave signal from a coalescing black hole binary system was observed by the Advanced LIGO detectors. This paper describes the transient noise backgrounds used to ...determine the significance of the event (designated GW150914) and presents the results of investigations into potential correlated or uncorrelated sources of transient noise in the detectors around the time of the event. The detectors were operating nominally at the time of GW150914. We have ruled out environmental influences and non-Gaussian instrument noise at either LIGO detector as the cause of the observed gravitational wave signal.
Pyrogenic organic matter (PyOM) is considered as a technique to improve soil fertility and store carbon (C) in soil. However, little is known regarding soil organic C and nitrogen (N) mineralization ...in PyOM-amended soils. To investigate the relationship between the C and N mineralization rates and the possible consequences in terms of C storage and N availability, we incubated ryegrass-derived PyOM (pyrolyzed at 450 °C) enriched in 13C (4.33 atom %) in a forest Cambisol for 158 days with and without mineral N addition. We determined PyOM and native soil organic C mineralization, NH4+ and NO3− contents in the soil, gross N mineralization, phenol-oxidase and protease activities, and microbial biomass throughout the incubation experiment and the incorporation of PyOM in microbial biomass at the end of the experiment (158 days). We determined that 4.3% of the initial PyOM-C was mineralized after 158 days. Moreover, PyOM induced a strongly positive priming effect within the first 18 days; a negative priming effect was observed from Days 18 to 158. The initial increase in organic matter mineralization corresponded to a higher gross N mineralization and NH4+ content in the PyOM-treated soil than in the untreated soil. Ammonium was rapidly transformed into nitrate and stored in this form until the end of the experiment. We conclude that the presence of PyOM affected the mineralization pattern of native soil organic matter mineralization and increased mineral N content, while N addition did not influence PyOM or soil organic matter mineralization.
•Incubation of PyOM (13C labeled) and soil, with and without N addition.•PyOM induced a positive priming effect in the first 18 days and a negative afterwards.•PyOM addition increased gross and net N mineralization in the first 18 days.•PyOM depressed phenol-oxidase activity and increased microbial biomass.•No effect of N addition on PyOM decomposition.
The first observing run of Advanced LIGO spanned 4 months, from 12 September 2015 to 19 January 2016, during which gravitational waves were directly detected from two binary black hole systems, ...namely GW150914 and GW151226. Confident detection of gravitational waves requires an understanding of instrumental transients and artifacts that can reduce the sensitivity of a search. Studies of the quality of the detector data yield insights into the cause of instrumental artifacts and data quality vetoes specific to a search are produced to mitigate the effects of problematic data. In this paper, the systematic removal of noisy data from analysis time is shown to improve the sensitivity of searches for compact binary coalescences. The output of the PyCBC pipeline, which is a python-based code package used to search for gravitational wave signals from compact binary coalescences, is used as a metric for improvement. GW150914 was a loud enough signal that removing noisy data did not improve its significance. However, the removal of data with excess noise decreased the false alarm rate of GW151226 by more than two orders of magnitude, from 1 in 770 yr to less than 1 in 186 000 yr.
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