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Decreased soil substrate availability with incubation time weakens the response of microbial respiration to high temperature in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau

  • Soils, Sec 3 • Remediation and Management of Contaminated or Degraded Lands • Research Article
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Abstract

Purpose

Increased microbial respiration (Rm) usually decreases with warming time in incubation and field manipulative experiments, and substrate depletion and/or microbial thermal acclimation to warming is hypothesized to be responsible for this decrease. However, few studies have been conducted to determine the mechanism for this decrease, especially in alpine regions.

Materials and methods

First, soils taken from an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau were incubated at three different temperatures (i.e., 5, 15, and 25 °C) with two soil moistures (i.e., 30 and 60% water holding capacity (WHC)) for 58 days, then another two experiments were conducted with incubation at high-low-high temperature (i.e., 25–15–25 °C) for 2 weeks and glucose-induced respiration (GIR) for 4 h.

Results and discussion

Rm increased with soil temperature increase at 60% WHC, but there were no significant differences between incubation at 5 and 15 °C with 30% WHC. Higher Rm was found at 60% WHC than at 30% WHC only when incubated at 15 and 25 °C. Both the high-low-high temperature incubation and GIR experiments indicated that decreased soil substrate availability weakened the responses of Rm to high temperature at 60% WHC, and there was no microbial thermal acclimation to temperature over the incubation period. Temperature sensitivity of Rm (Q10) was not affected by soil moisture, high-low-high temperature incubation, or glucose addition.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that the increase in Rm at higher temperature disappeared over the incubation period, and that this could be due to depletion of soil substrate availability.

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Acknowledgements

Authors are grateful for Dr. Andreas Wilkes for English language editing.

Funding

This work was supported by funding from the Key Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KFZD-SW-312), the National Science Foundation of China (41731175, 31672470), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0501801).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Hanke Liu and Wangwang Lv contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Hanke Liu, Wangwang Lv & Xiaoyong Cui

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

    Wangwang Lv, Shiping Wang & Lili Jiang

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

    Shiping Wang

  4. Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, 810008, China

    Caiyun Luo & Zhenhua Zhang

  5. University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences Division, 5801 South Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Zhezhen Wang

Authors
  1. Hanke Liu
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  2. Wangwang Lv
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  3. Shiping Wang
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  4. Caiyun Luo
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  5. Zhenhua Zhang
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  6. Zhezhen Wang
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  7. Lili Jiang
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  8. Xiaoyong Cui
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shiping Wang.

Additional information

Responsible editor: Jianming Xue

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Liu, H., Lv, W., Wang, S. et al. Decreased soil substrate availability with incubation time weakens the response of microbial respiration to high temperature in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau. J Soils Sediments 19, 255–262 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-018-1995-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-018-1995-2

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