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Land Use History Mediates Soil Biogeochemical Responses to Drought in Temperate Forest Ecosystems

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Abstract

Terrestrial ecosystems are experiencing increasing frequency and intensity of droughts as a result of climate change. Despite a wealth of previous studies investigating soil responses to drought, the importance of historical land use in mediating drought effects remains poorly understood. To identify interactions between drought and historical land use, we sampled soils from two adjacent forested watersheds at the USFS Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory: a ‘reference’ forest that has remained undisturbed for approximately a century and a ‘disturbed’ forest with a history of conversion to pasture followed by abandonment to forest succession. We incubated intact soil cores in the laboratory under one of two moisture treatments: a constant moisture control and a drought-rewet treatment, which involved a six-week drought followed by rewetting and six additional weeks at constant moisture. We measured respiration and characterized soil C and N pools and microbial communities multiple times throughout the experiment. Soils exposed to drought-rewetting had higher cumulative respiration than control soils, which was driven by particularly strong respiration responses of disturbed soils. In addition, drought-rewetting reduced microbial biomass and increased total extractable N and NH4+, with greater responses in reference watershed soils. Microbial communities also exhibited responses, with increased biomass C:N, increased fungal:bacterial ratios, and decreased nitrifier abundance in response to drought-rewetting. Overall, our results show that drought responses of forests will vary among land use histories and among soil parameters, which should be considered when seeking to predict biogeochemical responses of temperate ecosystems to climate stressors such as intensifying droughts.

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Data Availability

Data are available at https://github.com/eosburn/Coweeta-Microbes/tree/master/CWT_Drought

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Coweeta LTER, funded by National Science Foundation grant DEB-1637522 and by a Graduate Research Development Program (GRDP) awarded to EDO by the Virginia Tech Graduate Student Assembly. We thank the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, Southern Research Station, USDA Forest Service for support and Bobbie Niederlehner for help with analytical chemistry. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers, whose helpful comments greatly improved this manuscript.

Funding

This work was funded by the Coweeta LTER, funded by National Science Foundation grant DEB-1637522.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

    Ernest D. Osburn, Julia S. Simpson & J. E. Barrett

  2. College of Medicine, Penn State University, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA

    Julia S. Simpson

  3. Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

    Brian D. Strahm

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  1. Ernest D. Osburn
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  2. Julia S. Simpson
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Correspondence to Ernest D. Osburn.

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Author Contributions

EDO, BDS, and JEB conceived of and designed the study. EDO and JSS conducted the experiment. EDO conduced statistical analyses and wrote the manuscript. EDO, JSS, BDS, and JEB contributed to editing and revising the manuscript.

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Osburn, E.D., Simpson, J.S., Strahm, B.D. et al. Land Use History Mediates Soil Biogeochemical Responses to Drought in Temperate Forest Ecosystems. Ecosystems 25, 75–90 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-021-00641-9

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