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Microbial mediation of carbon-cycle feedbacks to climate warming

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 106–110 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms of biospheric feedbacks to climate change is critical to project future climate warming1,2,3. Although microorganisms catalyse most biosphere processes related to fluxes of greenhouse gases, little is known about the microbial role in regulating future climate change4. Integrated metagenomic and functional analyses of a long-term warming experiment in a grassland ecosystem showed that microorganisms play crucial roles in regulating soil carbon dynamics through three primary feedback mechanisms: shifting microbial community composition, which most likely led to the reduced temperature sensitivity of heterotrophic soil respiration; differentially stimulating genes for degrading labile but not recalcitrant carbon so as to maintain long-term soil carbon stability and storage; and enhancing nutrient-cycling processes to promote plant nutrient-use efficiency and hence plant growth. Elucidating microbially mediated feedbacks is fundamental to understanding ecosystem responses to climate warming and provides a mechanistic basis for carbon–climate modelling.

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Figure 1: Effects of warming on a series of plant and soil variables.
Figure 2: Impacts of warming on N cycling.
Figure 3: The normalized average signal intensity of detected C-degradation genes under warming and the control.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the US Department of Energy, Biological Systems Research on the Role of Microbial Communities in Carbon Cycling Program (DE-SC0004601), and Oklahoma Bioenergy Center (OBC). The GeoChips and associated computational pipelines used in this study were supported by ENIGMA—Ecosystems and Networks Integrated with Genes and Molecular Assemblies through the Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 and by the US Department of Agriculture (Project 2007-35319-18305) through the NSF-USDA Microbial Observatories Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Environmental Genomics, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA

    Jizhong Zhou, Kai Xue, Jianping Xie, Ye Deng, Liyou Wu, Zhili He & Joy D. Van Nostrand

  2. Department of Botany and Microbiology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA

    Jizhong Zhou, Kai Xue, Jianping Xie, Ye Deng, Liyou Wu, Xiaoli Cheng, Shenfeng Fei, Zhili He, Joy D. Van Nostrand & Yiqi Luo

  3. Earth Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, 94270, USA

    Jizhong Zhou

  4. State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

    Jizhong Zhou

  5. School of Mineral Processing and Bioengineering, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, 410083, China

    Jianping Xie

  6. Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430074, China

    Xiaoli Cheng

  7. Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078, USA

    Shiping Deng

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Contributions

All authors contributed intellectual input and assistance to this study and manuscript preparation. The original concept and experimental strategy were developed by J.Z. and L.W. Sampling collections, DNA preparation, GeoChip and pyrosequencing analysis were carried out by Y.D., J.X. and L.W. K.X. carried out soil chemical analysis and various statistical analyses with Y.D., and S.F. carried out modelling analysis. S.D. carried out soil enzyme analysis. Z.H., Y.D. and J.D.V.N. assisted with GeoChip and sequencing analysis. J.Z. and Y.L. guided all data analysis and integration. J.Z. and K.X. wrote the paper with help from Y.L. and Z.H.

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Correspondence to Jizhong Zhou.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Zhou, J., Xue, K., Xie, J. et al. Microbial mediation of carbon-cycle feedbacks to climate warming. Nature Clim Change 2, 106–110 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1331

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