Divergent effects of biological soil crusts on soil respiration between bare patches and shrub patches under simulated rainfall in a desert ecosystem in Northwest China

Wang, Yang; Li, Xiaoyan; Wu, Xiuchen; Hong, Yang; Wang, Tiejuan; Zuo, Fenglin; Zhang, Jinghui; Yang, Xiaofan

doi:10.1016/j.still.2021.105185

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…This is probably because the soil microbial functional genes were significantly increased under different types of biocrusts (Figure 5a-c;Maier et al, 2018;Zhao et al, 2020). Consistent with previous studies, the effects of mixed biocrusts on soil respiration produced mixed results in the typical steppe (Guan et al, 2022;Morillas et al, 2017;Wang, Li, et al, 2021), with the presence of biocrusts either increasing (Dettweiler-Robinson et al, 2018) or decreasing (Thomas, 2012) the total soil respiration. The probable cause of these divergent results was that the respiration of the biocrust layer decreases with decreased soil microbial activities when soil is mostly dry without precipitation, whereas the respiration of the biocrust layer increases with increased soil microbial activities under suitable soil water availability (Guan et al, 2022).…”

Section: Effects Of Biocrusts and Vegetation Restoration On Soil Resp...supporting

confidence: 88%

Microbial function regulates the effect of vegetation restoration on the contribution of biocrusts to soil respiration in drylands

et al. 2023

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Biocrusts are special components of dryland ecosystems and play important roles in ecosystem carbon cycles. Vegetation restoration not only affects carbon storage but also changes the characteristics of biocrusts. However, how vegetation restoration influences the contribution of biocrusts to soil carbon cycling in dryland ecosystems is poorly understood. Using continuous field measurements combined with metagenomic shotgun sequencing, we explored the effect and regulatory mechanisms of Caragana korshinskii vegetation restoration on the contribution of biocrusts to total soil respiration. We found that vegetation restoration increased the contribution of biocrusts to total soil respiration, with the biocrust contribution increasing from −5.6% for mixed biocrusts in a typical steppe to 17.1%, 18.1% and 19.6% for cyanobacteria–algae, lichen and moss biocrusts, respectively, in a Caragana korshinskii vegetation restoration area. The driving factors for total soil respiration changed from solely soil temperature to soil temperature and moisture after vegetation restoration. In contrast, the driving factors for soil respiration estimated for biocrust layers changed from precipitation alone to soil temperature and precipitation after vegetation restoration. We reveal that changes in microbial functional structure play important roles in regulating the effect of vegetation restoration and biocrusts on soil respiration. In addition, vegetation restoration also increases the microbial activity in biocrusted soils. This calls for an improved understanding of the effects of biocrusts on soil respiration under vegetation restoration scenarios to advance our ability to evaluate soil carbon releases from dryland ecosystems. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

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Section: Effects Of Biocrusts and Vegetation Restoration On Soil Resp...supporting

confidence: 88%

Microbial function regulates the effect of vegetation restoration on the contribution of biocrusts to soil respiration in drylands

et al. 2023

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“…Biocrust cover measurements thus correspond to the area covered by the visible components of the biocrust community, namely lichens and bryophytes, of the 10 plots. This is a common and non-destructive method for measuring biocrust cover (Chamizo and others 2021 ; Wang and others 2021 ), but only considers visible biocrust components.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biocrusts Modulate Climate Change Effects on Soil Organic Carbon Pools: Insights From a 9-Year Experiment

et al. 2022

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Accumulating evidence suggests that warming associated with climate change is decreasing the total amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) in drylands, although scientific research has not given enough emphasis to particulate (POC) and mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) pools. Biocrusts are a major biotic feature of drylands and have large impacts on the C cycle, yet it is largely unknown whether they modulate the responses of POC and MAOC to climate change. Here, we assessed the effects of simulated climate change (control, reduced rainfall (RE), warming (WA), and RE + WA) and initial biocrust cover (low (< 20%) versus high (> 50%)) on the mineral protection of soil C and soil organic matter quality in a dryland ecosystem in central Spain for 9 years. At low initial biocrust cover levels, both WA and RE + WA increased SOC, especially POC but also MAOC, and promoted a higher contribution of carbohydrates, relative to aromatic compounds, to the POC fraction. These results suggest that the accumulation of soil C under warming treatments may be transitory in soils with low initial biocrust cover. In soils with high initial biocrust cover, climate change treatments did not affect SOC, neither POC nor MAOC fraction. Overall, our results indicate that biocrust communities modulate the negative effect of climate change on SOC, because no losses of soil C were observed with the climate manipulations under biocrusts. Future work should focus on determining the long-term persistence of the observed buffering effect by biocrust-forming lichens, as they are known to be negatively affected by warming.

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Diurnal and seasonal carbon budget of subtropical moss-dominated biocrusts

Ji,

Su,

Lin

et al. 2024

Plant Soil

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Divergent effects of biological soil crusts on soil respiration between bare patches and shrub patches under simulated rainfall in a desert ecosystem in Northwest China

Cited by 8 publications

References 48 publications

Microbial function regulates the effect of vegetation restoration on the contribution of biocrusts to soil respiration in drylands

Microbial function regulates the effect of vegetation restoration on the contribution of biocrusts to soil respiration in drylands

Biocrusts Modulate Climate Change Effects on Soil Organic Carbon Pools: Insights From a 9-Year Experiment

Diurnal and seasonal carbon budget of subtropical moss-dominated biocrusts

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