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Letters to Nature
Nature 433, 57-59 (6 January 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature03138; Received 30 July 2004; Accepted 22 October 2004
There is a Corrigendum (11 August 2005) associated with this document.
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Similar response of labile and resistant soil organic matter pools to changes in temperature
Changming Fang1, Pete Smith1, John B. Moncrieff2 & Jo U. Smith1
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UU, UK
- Ecology and Resource Management, School of GeoSciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JU, UK
Correspondence to: Changming Fang1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to C.F. (Email: c.fang@abdn.ac.uk).
Abstract
Our understanding of the relationship between the decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) and soil temperature affects our predictions of the impact of climate change on soil-stored carbon1. One current opinion is that the decomposition of soil labile carbon is sensitive to temperature variation whereas resistant components are insensitive2, 3, 4. The resistant carbon or organic matter in mineral soil is then assumed to be unresponsive to global warming2, 4. But the global pattern and magnitude of the predicted future soil carbon stock will mainly rely on the temperature sensitivity of these resistant carbon pools. To investigate this sensitivity, we have incubated soils under changing temperature. Here we report that SOM decomposition or soil basal respiration rate was significantly affected by changes in SOM components associated with soil depth, sampling method and incubation time. We find, however, that the temperature sensitivity for SOM decomposition was not affected, suggesting that the temperature sensitivity for resistant organic matter pools does not differ significantly from that of labile pools, and that both types of SOM will therefore respond similarly to global warming.
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