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Non-linear temperature sensitivity of litter component decomposition under warming gradient with precipitation addition on the Tibetan plateau

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Abstract

Background and aims

Interactive effect of warming and precipitation addition on litter decomposition is still scarce. Moreover, nonlinear response of its temperature sensitivity to warming is not demonstrated due to lack of warming gradient experiment in situ.

Methods

we performed a warming gradient experiment (0, ~0.25–0.5, ~1, ~2, and ~4 °C, respectively) using infrared heaters and a precipitation addition treatment in a fully-factorial design for 2-years on the Tibetan Plateau. The responses of mass loss of litter components (i.e. organic matter (OM), soluble cell content (SCC), lignin, cellulose (Ce), hemi-cellulose (Hce), total organic carbon (OC)) and nutrients (total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP)) to warming and precipitation addition were determined over 2-years.

Results

We found that warming significantly increased annual mass losses of all litter components in both treatment years. Precipitation addition significantly increased annual mass losses of OM, SCC, OC, TN and TP only in the first year due to drought. There were no interactive effects between warming and precipitation addition on litter component decomposition in the semi-arid alpine region. Temperature sensitivities were lowest when soil temperature increased by a mean of about 2.3 °C. There was an inverse relationship between the temperature sensitivity of organic matter decomposition and quality of litter carbon compounds.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that soil temperature effects may override soil moisture effects on litter decomposition in the alpine region, and the nonlinear temperature sensitivity of litter decomposition should be estimated using warming gradients. Lower quality of litter carbon compounds had higher temperature sensitivity of organic matter decomposition.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by projects from the National Science Foundation of China (41731175 and 41988101), the Strategic Priority Research Program (A) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20050101), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0501802) and the National Science Foundation of China (31672470). We are grateful to Dr. Andreas Wilkes for polishing this manuscript, especially the grammar.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Alpine Ecology, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Wangwang Lv, Lirong Zhang, Bowen Li, Qi Wang, Yang Zhou, Lili Jiang, Peipei Liu, Huan Hong, Dorji Tsechoe & Shiping Wang

  2. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Wangwang Lv, Haishan Niu, Bowen Li, Qi Wang, Yang Zhou, Yanfen Wang, Peipei Liu & Huan Hong

  3. Key Laboratory of Environment Change and Resource Use in Beibu Gulf, Guangxi Normal University and Ministry of Education, Nanning, 530001, China

    Shugang Jia & Shiping Wang

  4. Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory of Restoration Ecology of Cold Area, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, 810008, China

    Caiyun Luo & Huakun Zhou

  5. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Dorji Tsechoe

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  1. Wangwang Lv
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Correspondence to Shiping Wang.

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Lv, W., Zhang, L., Niu, H. et al. Non-linear temperature sensitivity of litter component decomposition under warming gradient with precipitation addition on the Tibetan plateau. Plant Soil 448, 335–351 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04431-5

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