Abstract
Aims
Soil comprises diverse carbon (C) pools undergoing various decomposition stages, each characterized by distinct stability and turnover rates. The response of these C pools to warming with the input of plant residues remains unclear.
Methods
We conducted a 90-day incubation study at 15 °C and 25 °C, introducing 13C-labeled cellulose into soils from old-field (OF), bare-fallow (BF), and bare-fallow plus 815-day pre-incubation (BF+) representing different stages of soil organic matter decomposition.
Results
We estimated the priming effects (PE) of cellulose and found that PE were 30.6%, 59.3%, and 63.0% at 15 °C, and 20.8%, 35.3%, and 39.8% at 25 °C for OF, BF, and BF + soils, respectively. Net C balance was higher in BF and BF + soils than in OF soil by 0.6 − 2.8 mg C g−1 SOC at 15 °C and 1.8 − 3.8 mg C g−1 SOC at 25 °C. This indicated both PE and net C balance declined with warming regardless of soil C pool stability, but much greater in soil C pools at a slower decomposition stage.
Conclusions
Overall, this study underscores warming can uniformly decrease soil C sequestration potential although the distinct priming effects of the soil C pools at different decomposition stages.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- C:
-
Carbon
- TC:
-
Total carbon
- SOC:
-
Soil organic carbon
- MBC:
-
Microbial biomass carbon
- DOC:
-
Dissolved organic carbon
- N:
-
N
itrogen
- TN:
-
Total nitrogen
- IN:
-
Inorganic nitrogen
- OF:
-
Old-field
- BF:
-
Bare-fallow
- BF+:
-
Bare-fallow plus 815-day pre-incubation
- PE:
-
Priming effects
- WHC:
-
Water-holding capacity
- FTIR:
-
Fourier transform infrared spectrometer
- NMR:
-
Nuclear magnetic resonance
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Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFE0196000), the Foundation of Intelligent Ecotourism Subject Group of Chongqing Three Gorges University (zhlv20221012) and Chongqing graduate research innovation project (YJSKY22027).
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Zhenyu Yang: conceived the idea and laboratory analyses; Shuang Zhou, Lifeng Ping and Shuai Zhang: conceived the idea, performed field sampling and laboratory analyses; Guoxin Lan, Dafeng Hui, Peng Wang, Shengdao Shan and Junjie Lin: wrote the manuscript with input from all authors.
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Lin, J., Lan, G., Yang, Z. et al. Priming effects by cellulose inputs decrease with warming regardless of the decomposition stages of soil carbon pools. Plant Soil (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-024-06670-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-024-06670-2