The leaching of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from soils to the river network is an overlooked component of the terrestrial soil C budget. Measurements of DOC concentrations in soil, runoff and ...drainage are scarce and their spatial distribution highly skewed towards industrialized countries. The contribution of terrestrial DOC leaching to the global‐scale C balance of terrestrial ecosystems thus remains poorly constrained. Here, using a process based, integrative, modelling approach to upscale from existing observations, we estimate a global terrestrial DOC leaching flux of 0.28 ± 0.07 Gt C year−1 which is conservative, as it only includes the contribution of mineral soils. Our results suggest that globally about 15% of the terrestrial Net Ecosystem Productivity (NEP, calculated as the difference between Net Primary Production and soil respiration) is exported to aquatic systems as leached DOC. In the tropical rainforest, the leached fraction of terrestrial NEP even reaches 22%. Furthermore, we simulated spatial‐temporal trends in DOC leaching from soil to the river networks from 1860 to 2010. We estimated a global increase in terrestrial DOC inputs to river network of 35 Tg C year−1 (14%) from 1860 to 2010. Despite their low global contribution to the DOC leaching flux, boreal regions have the highest relative increase (28%) while tropics have the lowest relative increase (9%) over the historical period (1860s compared to 2000s). The results from our observationally constrained model approach demonstrate that DOC leaching is a significant flux in the terrestrial C budget at regional and global scales.
Using a process‐based, integrative, modelling approach to upscale from existing observations, we estimate a global terrestrial DOC leaching flux of 0.28 ± 0.07 Gt C year−1 which is conservative, as it only includes the contribution of mineral soils. Our results suggest that globally about 15% of the terrestrial Net Ecosystem Productivity is exported to aquatic systems as leached DOC. In the tropical rainforest, the leached fraction of terrestrial NEP even reaches 22%.
▶ Straw mineralization was not limited by mineral N availability. ▶ Priming effect (PE) was a saturating function of the amount of straw added. ▶ PE intensity did not increase linearly with ...increasing the straw additions. ▶ The effect of PE on the amount of soil-C was lower with higher straw inputs.
Inputs of fresh organic matter (FOM) are known to affect the rate of soil organic matter (SOM) mineralization. SOM mineralization can be accelerated or decelerated by FOM inputs. This phenomenon, known as the Priming effect (PE), may largely influence the carbon (C) storage capacity of soils. However, the link between PE intensity and FOM inputs is not clearly understood. Indeed, almost all the studies about PE used only one FOM amount which is generally largely below the amount of FOM observed in field conditions. In our study, we incubated soil amended with three levels of
13C-labeled straw as FOM and a control without FOM amendment for 80 days. The three levels used were in the same range as the natural FOM inputs observed on our sampling site. Various levels of mineral nitrogen were added within each level of straw supply so that the final input C:N ratios ranged among 44, 30 and 20. CO
2 and
δ
13C-CO
2 were measured during the experiment allowing us to distinguish the FOM respired CO
2 from the SOM respired CO
2. We observed that PE intensity did not increase linearly with increasing FOM additions. Moreover, decreasing the input C:N ratios did not systematically affect PE intensity probably because of shifts in the microbial characteristics such as their C:N ratio or their assimilation yields. These results suggest that PE is a saturating function of FOM inputs that is only weakly influenced by initial N availability. Our results may be explained (i) by the existence of a limited SOM pool subject to PE (ii) or by the occurrence of two simultaneous and antagonistic mechanisms: an increase of the total active microbial biomass accelerating SOM mineralization (i.e. a positive PE) and a preferential substrate utilization of FOM over SOM decreasing SOM mineralization (i.e. a negative PE). Finally, irrespective of the mechanisms implied, our results suggest that the importance of positive PE relatively to the amount of FOM may decrease when FOM inputs increase, which is favorable to carbon sequestration in soils. Indeed, in the case of the lower amount of FOM, the PE corresponded to 6.25% of the total amount of CO
2 mineralized at the end of the experiment while, for the higher amount of FOM, the PE corresponded to 5% of the total amount of CO
2 mineralized at the end of the experiment.
It remains unclear how soil microbes respond to labile organic carbon (LOC) inputs and how temperature sensitivity (Q10) of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition is affected by LOC inputs in a ...short-term. In this study, 13C-labeled glucose was added to a pristine grassland soil at four temperatures (10, 15, 20, and 25 °C), and the immediate utilization of LOC and native SOM by microbes was measured minutely in a short-term. We found that the LOC addition stimulated the native SOM decomposition, and elevated temperature enhanced the intensity of microbial response to LOC addition. The ratio between microbial respiration derived from LOC and native SOM increased with higher temperature, and more LOC for respiration. Additionally, LOC addition increased the Q10 of SOM decomposition, and the Q10 of LOC decomposition is higher than that of native SOM. Overall, these findings emphasize the important role of temperature and LOC inputs in soil C cycles.
•Elevated temperature enhanced the intensity of microbial response to labile organic C (LOC) addition.•CO2 emissions derived from both LOC and native SOM increased with temperature.•LOC decomposition were sensitive to temperature increase, and temperature increase resulted in more LOC for respiration.•LOC addition increased the Q10 of SOM decomposition, and the Q10 of LOC decomposition is higher than that of native SOM.
The priming effect (PE) is a key mechanism contributing to the carbon balance of the soil ecosystem. Almost 100 years of research since its discovery in 1926 have led to a rich body of scientific ...publications to identify the drivers and mechanisms involved. A few review articles have summarised the acquired knowledge; the last major one was published in 2010. Since then, knowledge on the soil microbial communities involved in PE and in PE + C sequestration mechanisms has been considerably renewed.
This article reviews current knowledge on soil PE to state to what extent new insights may improve our ability to understand and predict the evolution of soil C stocks. We propose a framework to unify the different concepts and terms that have emerged from the international scientific community on this topic, report recent discoveries and identify key research needs.
Seventy per cent of the studies on the soil PE were published in the last 10 years, illustrating a renewed interest for PE, probably linked to the increased concern about the importance of soil carbon for climate change and food security issues. Among all the drivers and mechanisms proposed along with the different studies to explain PE, some are named differently but actually refer to the same object. This overall introduces ‘artificial’ complexity for the mechanistic understanding of PE, and we propose a common, shared terminology. Despite the remaining knowledge gaps, consistent progress has been achieved to decipher the abiotic mechanisms underlying PE, together with the role of enzymes and the identity of the microbial actors involved. However, including PE into mechanistic models of SOM dynamics remains challenging as long as the mechanisms are not fully understood. In the meantime, empirical alternatives are available that reproduce observations accurately when calibration is robust.
Based on the current state of knowledge, we propose different scenarios depicting to what extent PE may impact ecosystem services under climate change conditions.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Fresh carbon input (above and belowground) contributes to soil carbon sequestration, but also accelerates decomposition of soil organic matter through biological priming mechanisms. Currently, poor ...understanding precludes the incorporation of these priming mechanisms into the global carbon models used for future projections. Here, we show that priming can be incorporated based on a simple equation calibrated from incubation and verified against independent litter manipulation experiments in the global land surface model, ORCHIDEE. When incorporated into ORCHIDEE, priming improved the model's representation of global soil carbon stocks and decreased soil carbon sequestration by 51% (12 ± 3 Pg C) during the period 1901–2010. Future projections with the same model across the range of CO2 and climate changes defined by the IPCC‐RCP scenarios reveal that priming buffers the projected changes in soil carbon stocks — both the increases due to enhanced productivity and new input to the soil, and the decreases due to warming‐induced accelerated decomposition. Including priming in Earth system models leads to different projections of soil carbon changes, which are challenging to verify at large spatial scales.
Evolution of the soil carbon stock change from: (a) 1901 to 2010. (b) from 1951 to 2100 for the RCP2.6. (c) from 1951 to 2100 for the RCP8.5. In all figures, red indicates the values predicted by ORCHIDEE‐PRIM and blue by ORCHIDEE. For all figures, the thin lines are the simulations with the parameter values modified by ± 50%. For (b) and (c), the light blue and the orange lines represent the simulations performed with the climate forcings from the HadGEM, IPSL‐CM5A and MIROC‐ESM‐CH models for ORCHIDEE and ORCHIDEE‐PRIM, respectively.
Some steps of the soil nitrogen (N) cycle are sensitive to environmental pressures like soil moisture or contamination, which are expected to evolve during the next decades. Individual stresses have ...been well studied, but their combination is not yet documented. In this work, we aimed at assessing the importance of the soil moisture on the impact of copper (Cu) contaminations on the N cycling soil function using the potential nitrification activities (PNA) as bioindicator. A two-step experiment was performed. First, a loamy soil was incubated 5 weeks in either 30, 60, or 90% of its water holding capacity (WHC) or alternating drought and rewetting periods. Thereafter, soil samples were exposed to a gradient of Cu concentrations through a bioassay involving nitrification. The dose–response curves of PNA in function of added Cu were modeled to calculate the effective Cu concentrations, namely ECx with x being the percentage of PNA inhibition. These values were then compared between experimental conditions to highlight differences in threshold values. The preincubation moisture treatments significantly affected the PNA responses to the secondary Cu stress with, for instance, hormetic responses in all cases except for the dry-rewetting treatment. Small PNA inhibitions were estimated for high Cu doses in the soils with low water contents (30% WHC) or submitted to dry-rewetting cycles, contrarily to the patterns observed for the soils with high water contents (90% WHC) or submitted to a single period of drought. Overall, significant differences were found in estimated ECx values between moisture treatments.
To explore the importance of soil microbial community composition on explaining the difference in heterotrophic soil respiration (R(h)) across forests, a field investigation was conducted on Rh and ...soil physiochemical and microbial properties in four subtropical forests in southern China. We observed that Rh differed significantly among forests, being 2.48 ± 0.23, 2.31 ± 0.21, 1.83 ± 0.08 and 1.56 ± 0.15 μmol m(-2) s(-1) in the climax evergreen broadleaf forest (BF), the mixed conifer and broadleaf forest (CF), the conifer plantation (CP), and the native broadleaved species plantation (BP), respectively. Both linear mixed effect model and variance decomposition analysis indicated that soil microbial community composition derived from phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) was not the first-order explanatory variable for the R(h) variance across the forests, with the explanatory power being 15.7%. Contrastingly, vegetational attributes such as root biomass (22.6%) and soil substrate availability (18.6%) were more important for explaining the observed R(h) variance. Our results therefore suggest that vegetation attributes and soil carbon pool size, rather than soil microbial community composition, should be preferentially considered to understand the spatial R(h) variance across the subtropical forests in southern China.
•New substrate-microbial reaction network to study microbial diversity.•Amount of carbon promotes decomposition more than microbial functional diversity.•Diversity of carbon sources and microbial ...trait variance promotes decomposition.•Increasing microbial diversity enhances decay more in low-diversity communities.
Microbial functional diversity in litter and soil has been hypothesized to affect the rate of decomposition of organic matter and other soil ecosystem functions. However, there are no clear theoretical expectations on how these effects might change with substrate availability, heterogeneity in the substrate chemistry, and different aspects of functional diversity itself (number of microbial groups vs. distribution of functional traits). To explore how these factors shape the decomposition-diversity relation, we carry out numerical experiments using a flexible reaction network comprising microbial processes and interactions with bioavailable carbon (extracellular degradation, uptake, respiration, growth, and mortality), and ecological processes (competition among the different groups). We also considered diverse carbon substrates, in terms of varying nominal oxidation state of carbon (NOSC). The reaction network was used to test the effects of (i) number of microbial groups, (ii) number of carbon pools, (iii) microbial functional diversity, and (iv) amount of bioavailable carbon. We found that the decomposition rate constant increases with increasing substrate concentration and heterogeneity, as well as with increasing microbial functional diversity or variance of microbial traits, albeit these biological factors are less important. The multivariate dependence of the decomposition rate constant (and other decomposition and microbial growth metrics) on substrate and microbial factors can be described using power laws with exponents lower than one, indicating that diversity effects on decomposition and microbial growth are reduced at high substrate concentration and heterogeneity, or at high microbial diversity.
Display omitted
A significant fraction of soil organic carbon, named stable organic carbon (C) pool, has residence times longer than centuries and its vulnerability to land use or climatic changes is virtually ...unknown. Long-term bare fallows offer a unique opportunity to isolate the stable organic pool of soils and study its properties. We investigated the vulnerability of the stable organic C pool to fresh organic matter inputs by comparing the mineralization in a long-term bare fallow soil with that of an adjacent arable soil, containing stable C as well as more labile C. For this, we amended or not the soil samples with two different 13C-labelled fresh organic matter (straw or cellulose). In all cases we found a positive priming effect (i.e. an increased mineralization of soil organic carbon) when fresh organic matter was added. By comparing the results obtained on both soils, we estimated that half of the “primed” C in the arable soil due to straw addition as fresh organic matter, originated from the stable C pool. Our results suggest that under such conditions, which frequently occur, the stable pool of soil organic matter may largely contribute to soil extra-CO2 emissions due to priming effect. Consequently, the C storage potential of this pool may be modified by changes in land use and/or biomass production that might change the priming of the mineralization of the stable pool of soil organic carbon.
► Soil stable C from a long term bare fallow can be de-stabilized by priming effect. ► Priming effect intensity dependend on fresh OM quality. ► Priming intensity was little or not affected by the amount of fresh OM added. ► 9-46% of mineralized SOC due to priming effet originated from stable C.
To respect the Paris agreement targeting a limitation of global warming below 2°C by 2100, and possibly below 1.5°C, drastic reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are mandatory but not sufficient. ...Large‐scale deployment of other climate mitigation strategies is also necessary. Among these, increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks is an important lever because carbon in soils can be stored for long periods and land management options to achieve this already exist and have been widely tested. However, agricultural soils are also an important source of nitrous oxide (N2O), a powerful greenhouse gas, and increasing SOC may influence N2O emissions, likely causing an increase in many cases, thus tending to offset the climate change benefit from increased SOC storage. Here we review the main agricultural management options for increasing SOC stocks. We evaluate the amount of SOC that can be stored as well as resulting changes in N2O emissions to better estimate the climate benefits of these management options. Based on quantitative data obtained from published meta‐analyses and from our current level of understanding, we conclude that the climate mitigation induced by increased SOC storage is generally overestimated if associated N2O emissions are not considered but, with the exception of reduced tillage, is never fully offset. Some options (e.g. biochar or non‐pyrogenic C amendment application) may even decrease N2O emissions.
In this study, we evaluate the amount of SOC that can be stored as well as resulting changes in N2O emissions to better estimate the climate benefits of these management options. Based on quantitative data obtained from published meta‐analyses and from our current level of understanding, we conclude that the climate mitigation induced by increased SOC storage is generally overestimated if associated N2O emissions are not considered but, with the exception of reduced tillage, is never fully offset.
PDF
