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Organic matter losses in German Alps forest soils since the 1970s most likely caused by warming

Abstract

Climate warming is expected to induce soil organic carbon losses in mountain soils that result, in turn, in reduced soil fertility, reduced water storage capacity and positive feedback on climate change. Here we combine two independent sets of measurements of soil organic carbon from forest soils in the German Alps—repeated measurements from 1976 to 2010 and from 1987 to 2011—to show that warming has caused a 14% decline in topsoil organic carbon stocks. The decreases in soil carbon occurred over a period of significant increases in six-month summer temperatures, with the most substantial decreases occurring at sites with large changes in mean annual temperature. Organic carbon stock decreases were largest—on average 32%—in forest soils with initial topsoil organic carbon stocks greater than 8 kg C m−2, which can be found predominantly on calcareous bedrock. However, organic carbon stocks of forest soils with lower initial carbon stocks, as well as soils under pasture or at elevations above 1,150 m, have not changed significantly. We conclude that warming is the most likely reason for the observed losses of soil organic carbon, but that site, land use and elevation may ameliorate the effects of climate change.

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Figure 1: Recent topsoil OC stock changes in soils of the German Alps with different land use.
Figure 2: Recent change of forest topsoil OC stocks in the German Alps depends on initial topsoil OC stocks.
Figure 3: Effect of site, climate and climate change variables on recent forest topsoil OC stock changes in the German Alps.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Pfab and T. Bartelt for assistance in sample preparation and analysis. R. Bochter, W. Neuerburg and H. Röhle kindly showed us the exact locations of the profiles where the first SOC inventories of the Set 2 study sites had been conducted in 1976. We appreciate the help of E. Hobley with language editing. Financial support for this study was provided by the Bavarian Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry (Grant B 69).

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Contributions

J.P. wrote the paper, designed the study, calculated mean SOC stock, temperature and precipitation changes, and performed the statistical data evaluation. L.Z. provided regionalized climate data and contributed to the main text and Methods (climate change issues). A.S. conducted the first SOC inventory of Set 1 and provided the respective data. D.C. conducted the second SOC inventories of Set 1 and 2, scrutinized and evaluated all soil data, and calculated SOC stock changes for the different study sites.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jörg Prietzel.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Prietzel, J., Zimmermann, L., Schubert, A. et al. Organic matter losses in German Alps forest soils since the 1970s most likely caused by warming. Nature Geosci 9, 543–548 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2732

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