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Response of archaeal communities to water regimes under simulated warming and drought conditions in Tibetan Plateau wetlands

  • SOILS, SEC 5 • SOIL AND LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY • RESEARCH ARTICLE
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Abstract

Purpose

Understanding how archaeal communities are affected by water-table drawdown is essential for predicting soil functional responses to future climate change and the consequences of the responses on the soil carbon cycle.

Material and methods

We investigated the effect of water-table drawdown, warming, drought, and combinations thereof on archaeal communities using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and quantitative PCR.

Results and discussion

Methanosarcinales, Methanosaeta, Methanomicrobiales, Methanobacteriales, uncultured Rice Cluster II (RC-II), and uncultured Crenarchaeota were detected. Water-table drawdown and drought exhibited significant effects on the archaeal communities. When the water table was at or above 10 cm, the archaeal abundance at 10 cm remained high (approximately 109 cells per gram dry soil), whereas the archaeal abundance at 10 cm was reduced to approximately 108 cells per gram dry soil where the water table was lowered to 20 cm or below. When the water table kept constant, warming caused a significant reduction in the archaeal abundance, whereas drought only caused a decrease in archaeal abundance when the water table was higher than −20 cm.

Conclusions

Results suggest that changes in water table may directly impact archaeal community abundance and assemblage which can in turn influence methane emissions, potentially on a large scale. Our results also indicate that archaeal communities response to water-table drawdowns that are dependent on the initial ecohydrology.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundations of China (No. 41101238) and 100 Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31100348)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Jianqing Tian, Chi Shu, Yuchen Qiao, Lin Wang, Jingzu Sun & Xingzhong Liu

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

    Chi Shu, Yuchen Qiao & Lin Wang

  3. Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration Biodiversity Conservation, Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Huai Chen & Wan Xiong

  4. Zoige Peatland and Global Change Research Station, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hongyuan, 624400, China

    Huai Chen

  5. Key Laboratory of Solid Waste Treatment and Resource Recycle, Ministry of Education, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, 621010, China

    Gang Yang

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  1. Jianqing Tian
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  2. Chi Shu
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  7. Lin Wang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jianqing Tian or Huai Chen.

Additional information

Responsible editor: Jizheng He

Jianqing Tian and Chi Shu contributed equally to this work.

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Tian, J., Shu, C., Chen, H. et al. Response of archaeal communities to water regimes under simulated warming and drought conditions in Tibetan Plateau wetlands. J Soils Sediments 15, 179–188 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-014-0978-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-014-0978-1

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