Abstract
Global environmental change is altering the quality and quantity of plant inputs into soil. However, it is unclear how these long-term changes may fundamentally shift the biogeochemistry of soil carbon in forests. To better understand how varied detrital inputs alter soil organic matter (OM) biogeochemistry and composition at the molecular-level, soil samples were collected from a 20 year detrital manipulation experiment in an old-growth coniferous rainforest in Western Oregon. The experiment includes ambient (control) plots and six treatments: Double Litter, Double Wood, No Roots, No Litter, No Inputs and OA-less (replacement of O and A horizons with B horizon). Total soil carbon and nitrogen, molecular-level OM composition using solid-state 13C nuclear magnetic resonance, and targeted compound extractions were measured. Although soil carbon did not increase with Double Litter and Double Wood, microbial biomass and the decomposition of specific forms of soil OM (i.e., cellulose) increased, likely due to sustained soil priming over 20 years. Mineral (0–10 cm) soil carbon was similar across litter exclusion treatments (No Litter, No Roots, No Inputs), however, soil OM decomposition increased relative to the control. Microbial-derived lipids increased under Double Litter but decreased when above-ground litter was excluded. Notably, needle-derived lipids decreased with above-ground litter exclusion and root-derived compounds did not change under below-ground root exclusion. These results suggested that above-ground litter alters soil carbon biogeochemistry in surface soils to a greater extent than below-ground inputs. This study also demonstrated that long-term soil carbon biogeochemical trajectories were mostly governed by litter quality, quality and microbial processing of above-ground inputs.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dr. Ronald Soong for assistance with NMR acquisition. M.J.S. thanks the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council (NSERC) of Canada for support via a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Integrative Molecular Biogeochemistry. M.M. thanks the University of Toronto for the Connaught International Scholarship. R.Y. thanks NSERC for support via an Undergraduate Student Research Award.
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This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada via a Discovery Grant to M.J.S. Support for the DIRT plots was provided by National Science Foundation Grants DEB-1257032 to K.L. and DEB-1440409 to the H.J. Andrews Long-Term Ecological Research Program.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by MM, DP, RC, MTA, LV, and RY. The first draft of the manuscript was written by MM and MJS. Constructive comments were provided by KL and DP on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Man, M., Pierson, D., Chiu, R. et al. Twenty years of litter manipulation reveals that above-ground litter quantity and quality controls soil organic matter molecular composition. Biogeochemistry 159, 393–411 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-022-00934-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-022-00934-8