Abstract
The fumigation/respiration technique was used to estimate the size of the soil microbial biomass. Sieving decreased the biomass in winter but increased it in summer; we suggest that this was a consequence of the different substrates available and the different microbial populations during the year. The flush in respiration following fumigation correlated significantly with the CO2-C produced 10 days after fumigation (X), so that in the soils studied by us the biomass (B) can be calculated from Bk=0.673X−3.53, wherek is the fraction of fumigated organisms mineralized to CO2, thus avoiding the need to measure CO2 production from unfumigated cores.
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Lynch, J.M., Panting, L.M. Measurement of the microbial biomass in intact cores of soil. Microb Ecol 7, 229–234 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02010305
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02010305