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Partitioning soil respiration: quantifying the artifacts of the trenching method

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Abstract

Total soil respiration (Rt) is a combination of autotrophic (Ra) and heterotrophic respiration (Rh). Root exclusion methods, such as soil trenching, are often utilized to separate these components. This method involves severing the rooting system surrounding a plot to remove the Ra component. However, soil trenching has potential limitations including (1) reduced water uptake in trenched plots that increases soil water content, which is one of the environmental controllers of Rt in many ecosystems, and (2) increased available carbon substrate for Rh caused by recently severed dead roots. We present a methodology that utilizes a bayesian modeling framework to quantify the magnitude of artifacts from a large trenching manipulation experiment. Thus methodology corrects Rh and Ra observations at daily to seasonal time scales. This study finds that the artifacts, due to recently severed roots, persist over a 2 years study period and the artifacts due to altered soil moisture had the greatest impact during drought conditions.

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Abbreviations

Ra:

Autotrophic respiration

Rh:

Heterotrophic respiration

Rt:

Total soil respiration

RSR:

Recently severed roots

SMT:

Soil moisture and temperature

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the DOE- TES, Award Number DE-SC0006741. All model code in Supplementary Materials S1 and S2 are made available in the GitHub repository https://github.com/Savage149/Trenching-Artifacts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Woods Hole Research Center, 149 Woods Hole Rd, Falmouth, MA, 02540, USA

    K. E. Savage

  2. University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, 301 Braddock Road, Frostburg, MD, 21532, USA

    E. A. Davidson

  3. Boston University, 5 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    R. Z. Abramoff, A. C. Finzi & M.-A. Giasson

  4. Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, MS74R316C, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    R. Z. Abramoff

Authors
  1. K. E. Savage
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  2. E. A. Davidson
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  3. R. Z. Abramoff
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  4. A. C. Finzi
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  5. M.-A. Giasson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to K. E. Savage.

Additional information

Responsible Editor: Sasha C. Reed.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

10533_2018_472_MOESM1_ESM.zip

S1: two files with the R code (S1_decomp_model_FINAL.R) and jags model code (S1_rootdecomp_jags_FINAL.R) for the bayesian modeling for recently severed roots (RSR) plus a sample data file (S1_rootdecomp.csv). Supplementary material 1 (ZIP 3 kb)

10533_2018_472_MOESM2_ESM.zip

S2_SMT: two files with the R code (S2_Q10andWC_model_FINAL.R) and jags model code (S2_Q10andWC_jags_FINLA.R) for the bayesian modeling for moisture and temperature artifacts plus a sample data file (S2_Fluxdata_example.csv). Supplementary material 2 (ZIP 13 kb)

S3: Graph of pre-trenched and control soil moisture for 2012. Supplementary material 3 (ZIP 186 kb)

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Savage, K.E., Davidson, E.A., Abramoff, R.Z. et al. Partitioning soil respiration: quantifying the artifacts of the trenching method. Biogeochemistry 140, 53–63 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-018-0472-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-018-0472-8

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