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The influence of soil communities on the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 2, pages 1597–1602 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Soil respiration represents a major carbon flux between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere, and is expected to accelerate under climate warming. Despite its importance in climate change forecasts, however, our understanding of the effects of temperature on soil respiration (RS) is incomplete. Using a metabolic ecology approach we link soil biota metabolism, community composition and heterotrophic activity to predict RS rates across five biomes. We find that accounting for the ecological mechanisms underpinning decomposition processes predicts climatological RS variations observed in an independent dataset (n = 312). The importance of community composition is evident because without it RS is substantially underestimated. With increasing temperature, we predict a latitudinal increase in RS temperature sensitivity, with Q10 values ranging between 2.33 ± 0.01 in tropical forests to 2.72 ± 0.03 in tundra. This global trend has been widely observed, but has not previously been linked to soil communities.

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Fig. 1: Metabolic scaling relationships in soil communities.
Fig. 2: Soil community composition across biomes.
Fig. 3: Temperature sensitivity of soil respiration (RS) across biomes and MATs.
Fig. 4: Model comparisons and goodness of fits with independent soil respiration (RS, g C m−2 yr−1) data.
Fig. 5: Observed and predicted Q10 values for RS across biomes.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been financially supported by a Natural Environment Research Council Soil Security Programme fellowship (NE/N019504/1). We thank C. Venditti, J. Brown, G. Yvon-Durocher and C. Hall for their feedback and suggestions on the manuscript.

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  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Alice S. A. Johnston & Richard M. Sibly

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  1. Alice S. A. Johnston
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A.S.A.J. conceived the idea and compiled and analysed the data. A.S.A.J. and R.M.S. developed the methodology and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Alice S. A. Johnston.

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Johnston, A.S.A., Sibly, R.M. The influence of soil communities on the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 1597–1602 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0648-6

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