Abstract
Warming and elevated atmospheric CO2 (eCO2) can elicit contrasting responses on different SOM pools, thus to understand the effects of combined factors it is necessary to evaluate individual pools. Over two years, we assessed responses to eCO2 and warming of SOM pools, their susceptibility to decomposition, and whether these responses were mediated by plant inputs in a semi-arid grassland at the PHACE (Prairie Heating and CO2 Enrichment) experiment. We used long-term soil incubations and assessed relationships between plant inputs and the responses of the labile and resistant pools. We found strong and contrasting effects of eCO2 and warming on the labile C pool. In 2008 labile C was increased by eCO2 and was positively related to plant biomass. In contrast, in 2007 eCO2 and warming had interactive effects on the labile C, and the pool size was not related to plant biomass. Effects of warming and eCO2 in this year were consistent withtreatment effects on soil moisture and temperature and their effects on labile C decomposition. The decomposition rate of the resistant C was positively related to indicators of plant C inputs. Our approach demonstrated that SOM pools in this grassland can have early and contrasting responses to climate change factors. The labile C pool in the mixed-grass prairie was highly responsive to eCO2 and warming but the factors behind such responses were highly dynamic across years. Results suggest that in this grassland the resistant C pool could be negatively affected by increases in plant-production driven available soil C.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dan LeCain and David Smith for technical support with the field experiment and the lab of Ronald F. Follett for the soil analyses. We thank Sarah Berg, Hannah Rae Munn, Christine Rumsey, Matthew Wood and Megan Steinweg for assistance in the field and in the lab and Jennifer King for insightful review of the manuscript. This project was supported by USDA-CSREES Soil Processes Program (Grant no. 2008-35107-18655), by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science (BER) through the Western Regional Center of the National Institute for Climatic Change Research at Northern Arizona University, NSF (DEB# 1021559) and the USDA-Agricultural Research Service.
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Carrillo, Y., Pendall, E., Dijkstra, F.A. et al. Response of soil organic matter pools to elevated CO2 and warming in a semi-arid grassland. Plant Soil 347, 339–350 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-011-0853-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-011-0853-4