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Biotic carbon feedbacks in a materially closed soil–vegetation–atmosphere system

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 281–284 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

The magnitude and direction of the coupled feedbacks between the biotic and abiotic components of the terrestrial carbon cycle is a major source of uncertainty in coupled climate–carbon-cycle models1,2,3. Materially closed, energetically open biological systems continuously and simultaneously allow the two-way feedback loop between the biotic and abiotic components to take place4,5,6,7, but so far have not been used to their full potential in ecological research, owing to the challenge of achieving sustainable model systems6,7. We show that using materially closed soil–vegetation–atmosphere systems with pro rata carbon amounts for the main terrestrial carbon pools enables the establishment of conditions that balance plant carbon assimilation, and autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration fluxes over periods suitable to investigate short-term biotic carbon feedbacks. Using this approach, we tested an alternative way of assessing the impact of increased CO2 and temperature on biotic carbon feedbacks. The results show that without nutrient and water limitations, the short-term biotic responses could potentially buffer a temperature increase of 2.3 °C without significant positive feedbacks to atmospheric CO2. We argue that such closed-system research represents an important test-bed platform for model validation and parameterization of plant and soil biotic responses to environmental changes.

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Figure 1: Effects of climate scenarios (S15, S 15 CO 2 and S Δ 3 CO 2 ) on atmospheric CO2 (ppmv), slopes of CO2 change, respiration and net photosynthesis.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge financial support by the Natural Environment Research Council. Great support and advice has been offered by G. Mace and the Ecotron Steering Committee (M. Press, S. Hartley and J. Roy). We thank T. Sloan, M. Saunders and H. Vallack for technical support, CO2 additions and sample analysis. We also thank M. J. Crawley for the advice on statistical analysis and A. Fitter for comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Biology, NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Ascot SL5 7PY, UK

    Alexandru Milcu, Martin Lukac, Pete Manning, Dennis Wildman & Robert Anderson

  2. School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Berkshire RG6 6AR, UK

    Martin Lukac

  3. School Natural Sciences, Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK

    Jens-Arne Subke

  4. University of Newcastle, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK

    Pete Manning

  5. Environment Department, Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK

    Andreas Heinemeyer & Phil Ineson

  6. Department of Biology, NERC National Centre for Earth Observation, York-Centre, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK

    Andreas Heinemeyer & Phil Ineson

Authors
  1. Alexandru Milcu
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  2. Martin Lukac
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  3. Jens-Arne Subke
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  4. Pete Manning
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  5. Andreas Heinemeyer
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  6. Dennis Wildman
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  7. Robert Anderson
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  8. Phil Ineson
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Contributions

A.M. wrote the manuscript. P.I. was responsible for the original concept and acquiring financial support and with A.M. and M.L. designed the experiments. A.M. and M.L. carried out the experiments and the statistical analyses. J-A.S. analysed the soil and plant samples. D.W. and A.M. designed specific pieces of equipment and engineered the materially closed systems. D.W. implemented the open-path infrared gas analyser and carried out the TREND programming. R.A. contributed to the TREND programming and database maintenance. P.M. and A.H. conducted preliminary experiments. All authors discussed the results and the structure of the paper, commented and revised the manuscript text.

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Correspondence to Alexandru Milcu.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Milcu, A., Lukac, M., Subke, JA. et al. Biotic carbon feedbacks in a materially closed soil–vegetation–atmosphere system. Nature Clim Change 2, 281–284 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1448

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