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Greenhouse-gas emissions from soils increased by earthworms

Abstract

Earthworms play an essential part in determining the greenhouse-gas balance of soils worldwide, and their influence is expected to grow over the next decades. They are thought to stimulate carbon sequestration in soil aggregates, but also to increase emissions of the main greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. Hence, it remains highly controversial whether earthworms predominantly affect soils to act as a net source or sink of greenhouse gases. Here, we provide a quantitative review of the overall effect of earthworms on the soil greenhouse-gas balance. Our results suggest that although earthworms are largely beneficial to soil fertility, they increase net soil greenhouse-gas emissions.

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Figure 1: Percentage effect of earthworm presence on N2O and CO2 emissions from soil and SOC.
Figure 2: Percentage effect of earthworm presence on the net GWP of the soil for each observation that included both N2O and CO2 flux measurements and the average for all observations.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a personal VIDI grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research/Earth and Life Sciences (NWO-ALW) to Jan Willem van Groenigen. We thank Olaf Butenschoen and Bruce A. Snyder for providing standard deviations of their published data for our meta-analysis. We are grateful to Gerlinde De Deyn for giving helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript.

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IML and JWVG conceived and designed the study, with suggestions and input from SJF and JS; IML extracted the data from the literature and constructed the database; IML and KJVG performed the statistical analysis; IML, JWVG, KJVG, SJF, JS and LB interpreted and discussed the results; IML, JWVG and KJVG wrote the paper, with substantial contributions from all co-authors; JWVG had the overall supervision of the project.

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Correspondence to Ingrid M. Lubbers.

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Lubbers, I., van Groenigen, K., Fonte, S. et al. Greenhouse-gas emissions from soils increased by earthworms. Nature Clim Change 3, 187–194 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1692

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