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Combined climate factors alleviate changes in gross soil nitrogen dynamics in heathlands

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Abstract

The ongoing climate change affects biogeochemical cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, but the magnitude and direction of this impact is yet unclear. To shed further light on the climate change impact, we investigated alterations in the soil nitrogen (N) cycling in a Danish heathland after 5 years of exposure to three climate change factors, i.e. warming, elevated CO2 (eCO2) and summer drought, applied both in isolation and in combination. By conducting laboratory 15N tracing experiments we show that warming increased both gross N mineralization and nitrification rates. In contrast, gross nitrification was decreased by eCO2, an effect that was more pronounced when eCO2 was combined with warming and drought. Moreover, there was an interactive effect between the warming and CO2 treatment, especially for N mineralization: rates increased at warming alone but decreased at warming combined with eCO2. In the full treatment combination, simulating the predicted climate for the year 2075, gross N transformations were only moderately affected compared to control, suggesting a minor alteration of the N cycle due to climate change. Overall, our study confirms the importance of multifactorial field experiments for a better understanding of N cycling in a changing climate, which is a prerequisite for more reliable model predictions of ecosystems responses to climate change.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Anja Nielsen, Nina Thomsen, Mette Flodgaard and Bente Andersen for help with laboratory incubations and sample analyses. Sabine Reinsch is gratefully acknowledged for help with the R-statistics. The CLIMAITE project is financially supported by the Villum Kann Rasmussen foundation and logistic support is provided by DONG Energy, Air Liquide Denmark A/S and SMC Pneumatic A/S. A.-K.B. received travel support from the EU FP7 infrastructure program Increase and the ESF Nitrogen in Europe (NinE) research network. T.R. is supported by the strategic research area Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate (BECC, www.cec.lu.se/research/becc).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Box 460, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Anna-Karin Björsne & Tobias Rütting

  2. Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs., Lyngby, Denmark

    Per Ambus

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  1. Anna-Karin Björsne
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  3. Per Ambus
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Correspondence to Tobias Rütting.

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Björsne, AK., Rütting, T. & Ambus, P. Combined climate factors alleviate changes in gross soil nitrogen dynamics in heathlands. Biogeochemistry 120, 191–201 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-014-9990-1

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