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Tundra soil carbon is vulnerable to rapid microbial decomposition under climate warming

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 595–600 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Microbial decomposition of soil carbon in high-latitude tundra underlain with permafrost is one of the most important, but poorly understood, potential positive feedbacks of greenhouse gas emissions from terrestrial ecosystems into the atmosphere in a warmer world1,2,3,4. Using integrated metagenomic technologies, we showed that the microbial functional community structure in the active layer of tundra soil was significantly altered after only 1.5 years of warming, a rapid response demonstrating the high sensitivity of this ecosystem to warming. The abundances of microbial functional genes involved in both aerobic and anaerobic carbon decomposition were also markedly increased by this short-term warming. Consistent with this, ecosystem respiration (Reco) increased up to 38%. In addition, warming enhanced genes involved in nutrient cycling, which very likely contributed to an observed increase (30%) in gross primary productivity (GPP). However, the GPP increase did not offset the extra Reco, resulting in significantly more net carbon loss in warmed plots compared with control plots. Altogether, our results demonstrate the vulnerability of active-layer soil carbon in this permafrost-based tundra ecosystem to climate warming and the importance of microbial communities in mediating such vulnerability.

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Figure 1: Warming effects on soil variables and ecosystem C fluxes.
Figure 2: Warming effects on functional genes involved in biogeochemical cycling processes.
Figure 3: A conceptual model of the impact of warming on the active layer of tundra ecosystem processes.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Genomic Science Program under Award Numbers DE-SC0004601 and DE-SC0010715, the NSF LTER program, the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma, and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Regional Environmental Quality.

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Author notes

  1. Kai Xue and Mengting M. Yuan: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

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

    Kai Xue & Jizhong Zhou

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

    Kai Xue, Mengting M. Yuan, Zhou J. Shi, Yujia Qin, Ye Deng, Lei Cheng, Liyou Wu, Zhili He, Joy D. Van Nostrand & Jizhong Zhou

  3. Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA

    Kai Xue, Mengting M. Yuan, Zhou J. Shi, Yujia Qin, Ye Deng, Lei Cheng, Liyou Wu, Zhili He, Joy D. Van Nostrand, Yiqi Luo & Jizhong Zhou

  4. Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10085, China

    Ye Deng

  5. College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

    Lei Cheng

  6. Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA

    Rosvel Bracho & Edward. A. G. Schuur

  7. Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Massachusetts 02540, USA

    Susan Natali

  8. Department of Biological Sciences, Center for Ecosystem Sciences and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona 86001, USA

    Edward. A. G. Schuur

  9. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA

    Chengwei Luo & Konstantinos T. Konstantinidis

  10. Center for Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA

    Qiong Wang, James R. Cole & James M. Tiedje

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

    Jizhong Zhou

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  1. Kai Xue
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Contributions

All authors contributed intellectual input and assistance to this study and manuscript preparation. J.Z., E.A.G.S., Y.L., J.M.T. and K.T.K. developed the original concepts. K.X., M.M.Y., Z.J.S., L.W., Z.H., Y.Q., Y.D., J.D.V.N., Q.W. and C.L. contributed reagents and data analysis. R.B. handled all soils processing and subsampling for microbial analysis. S.N. provided key field data. M.M.Y. and L.C. did sequencing and GeoChip hybridization. K.X., M.M.Y. and J.Z. performed data analysis and integration. K.X., M.M.Y. and J.Z. wrote the paper with help from E.A.G.S., K.T.K., Y.L., J.R.C. and J.M.T.

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Correspondence to Jizhong Zhou.

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Xue, K., M. Yuan, M., J. Shi, Z. et al. Tundra soil carbon is vulnerable to rapid microbial decomposition under climate warming. Nature Clim Change 6, 595–600 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2940

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