Soil-carbon response to warming dependent on microbial physiology

Allison, Steven D.; Wallenstein, Matthew D.; Bradford, Mark A.

doi:10.1038/ngeo846

Cited by 1,312 publications

(1,352 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…However, it is more likely due to a decline in growth or increase in turnover rate either due to heat stress or a shift in community composition to organism with lower biomass production. The literature indicates that microorganisms subject to heat stress may respond by decreasing their overall biomass 15 or decreasing the fraction of assimilated C that is allocated to their growth 25 . In the case of N addition, in contrast, total soil C increased, whereas microbial amino sugars decreased slightly.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warming and nitrogen deposition lessen microbial residue contribution to soil carbon pool

2012

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Microorganisms have a role as gatekeepers for terrestrial carbon fluxes, either causing its release to the atmosphere through their decomposition activities or preventing its release by stabilizing the carbon in a form that cannot be easily decomposed. Although research has focused on microbial sources of greenhouse gas production, somewhat limited attention has been paid to the microbial role in carbon sequestration. However, increasing numbers of reports indicate the importance of incorporating microbial-derived carbon into soil stable carbon pools. Here we investigate microbial residues in a California annual grassland after a continuous 9-year manipulation of three environmental factors (elevated CO 2 , warming and nitrogen deposition), singly and in combination. Our results indicate that warming and nitrogen deposition can both alter the fraction of carbon derived from microbes in soils, though for two very different reasons. A reduction in microbial carbon contribution to stable carbon pools may have implications for our predictions of global change impacts on soil stored carbon.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warming and nitrogen deposition lessen microbial residue contribution to soil carbon pool

2012

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“…Although 337 PLFA profiles only provide a description of microbial community composition at a high 338 taxonomic level, recent research syntheses 41,42 accentuate that this level may matter for 339 ecosystem function. In the future it will be necessary to evaluate presented here provides empirical data that can feed into emerging microbial-enzyme carbon-362 climate based feedback models 44,45 , and the proposed ecological model of microbial energetics in 363 soil ecosystems can be used as a start.…”

Section: Acs Paragon Plus Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…42 According to the second law of thermodynamics, high order energy (exergy) dissipates as low 43 order energy from a system over time and this process is irreversible. From an energy point of 44 view, soil ecosystems can be characterized as open systems of non-equilibrium thermodynamics 45 with the decomposition of soil organic matter to carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) as a dissipative process 46 that increases entropy 3,4 . Microbial metabolism is divided into two categories: catabolic reactions 47 allochtonous r-versus zymogenous K-selection concept 17 has been criticized as being an 76 oversimplified view of the processes of natural selection in ecology 18 , it is still consistent with 77 modern interpretation of community type and soil microbial functioning 14 .…”

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confidence: 99%

Isothermal Microcalorimetry Provides New Insight into Terrestrial Carbon Cycling

Herrmann

Coucheney

Nunan

2014

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Energy is continuously transformed in environmental systems through the metabolic activities of living organisms, but little is known about the relationship between the two. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that microbial energetics are controlled by microbial community composition in terrestrial ecosystems. We determined the functional diversity profiles of the soil biota (i.e., multiple substrate-induced respiration and microbial energetics) in soils from an arable ecosystem with contrasting long-term management regimes (54 years). These two functional profiling methods were then related to the soils’ microbial community composition. Using isothermal microcalorimetry, we show that direct measures of energetics provide a functional link between energy flows and the composition of below-ground microbial communities at a high taxonomic level (Mantel R = 0.4602, P = 0.006). In contrast, this link was not apparent when carbon dioxide (CO2) was used as an aggregate measure of microbial metabolism (Mantel R = 0.2291, P = 0.11). Our work advocates that the microbial energetics approach provides complementary information to soil respiration for investigating the involvement of microbial communities in below-ground carbon dynamics. Empirical data of our proposed microbial energetics approach can feed into carbon-climate based ecosystem feedback modeling with the suggested conceptual ecological model as a base.

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“…Extensive bodies of work have provided detailed insights into the mechanism(s) on the transformation of soil C pools by extracellular enzymes excreted into the soil by microbes, thus allowing researchers to develop enzyme-driven ESMs that provide a better fit to observations, especially in changing environments (Allison et al, 2010;Treseder et al, 2012;Wieder et al, 2013;Hararuk et al, 2015). Processlevel analyses such as respiration and enzymatic transformation of added substrate are used as a proxy of microbial function, which gives valuable insight into overall microbial-mediated transformations in soils.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial regulation of the soil carbon cycle: evidence from gene–enzyme relationships

et al. 2016

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A lack of empirical evidence for the microbial regulation of ecosystem processes, including carbon (C) degradation, hinders our ability to develop a framework to directly incorporate the genetic composition of microbial communities in the enzyme-driven Earth system models. Herein we evaluated the linkage between microbial functional genes and extracellular enzyme activity in soil samples collected across three geographical regions of Australia. We found a strong relationship between different functional genes and their corresponding enzyme activities. This relationship was maintained after considering microbial community structure, total C and soil pH using structural equation modelling. Results showed that the variations in the activity of enzymes involved in C degradation were predicted by the functional gene abundance of the soil microbial community (R 2 40.90 in all cases). Our findings provide a strong framework for improved predictions on soil C dynamics that could be achieved by adopting a gene-centric approach incorporating the abundance of functional genes into process models.

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Soil-carbon response to warming dependent on microbial physiology

Cited by 1,312 publications

References 30 publications

Warming and nitrogen deposition lessen microbial residue contribution to soil carbon pool

Warming and nitrogen deposition lessen microbial residue contribution to soil carbon pool

Isothermal Microcalorimetry Provides New Insight into Terrestrial Carbon Cycling

Microbial regulation of the soil carbon cycle: evidence from gene–enzyme relationships

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