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No depth-dependence of fine root litter decomposition in temperate beech forest soils

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Abstract

Aims

Subsoil organic carbon (OC) tends to be older and is presumed to be more stable than topsoil OC, but the reasons for this are not yet resolved. One hypothesis is that decomposition rates decrease with increasing soil depth. We tested whether decomposition rates of beech fine root litter varied with depth for a range of soils using a litterbag experiment in German beech forest plots.

Methods

In three study regions (Schorfheide-Chorin, Hainich-Dün and Schwäbische-Alb), we buried 432 litterbags containing 0.5 g of standardized beech root material (fine roots with a similar chemical composition collected from 2 year old Fagus sylvatica L. saplings, root diameter < 2 mm) at three different soil depths (5, 20 and 35 cm). The decomposition rates as well as the changes in the carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) concentrations of the decomposing fine root litter were determined at a 6 months interval during a 2 years field experiment.

Results

The amount of root litter remaining after 2 years of field incubation differed between the study regions (76 ± 2 % in Schorfheide-Chorin, 85 ± 2 % in Schwäbische-Alb, and 88 ± 2 % in Hainich-Dün) but did not vary with soil depth.

Conclusions

Our results indicate that the initial fine root decomposition rates are more influenced by regional scale differences in environmental conditions including climate and soil parent material, than by changes in microbial activities with soil depth. Moreover, they suggest that a similar potential to decompose new resources in the form of root litter exists in both surface and deep soils.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Steffen Both, Jörg Hailer and Uta Schumacher for their help with the field work and technical organization. The authors acknowledge Beate Michalzik and Carlos Sierra for their valuable comments on the manuscript. We thank Theresa Klötzing for technical support, and Ines Hilke and Birgit Fröhlich for the CN analysis. Jakob Zscheischler for the mathematical and statistical help. We thank the managers of the three Exploratories, Kirsten Reichel-Jung, Swen Renner, Katrin Hartwich, Sonja Gockel, Kerstin Wiesner, and Martin Gorke for their work in maintaining the plot and project infrastructure; Christiane Fischer and Simone Pfeiffer for giving support through the central office, Michael Owonibi for managing the central data base, and Markus Fischer, Eduard Linsenmair, Dominik Hessenmöller, Jens Nieschulze, Daniel Prati, François Buscot, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Wolfgang W. Weisser and the late Elisabeth Kalko for their role in setting up the Biodiversity Exploratories project. The work has been funded by the DFG Priority Program 1374 “Infrastructure-Biodiversity-Exploratories” (SCHR 1181/2-1) and the Max-Planck-Society. Field work permits were issued by the responsible state environmental offices of Baden-Württemberg, Thüringen, and Brandenburg (according to § 72 BbgNatSchG). Emily Solly conducted this work as part of the International Max Planck Research School for Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Hans-Knöll-Str. 10, 07745, Jena, Germany

    Emily F. Solly, Ingo Schöning, Nadine Herold, Susan E. Trumbore & Marion Schrumpf

  2. Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Emily F. Solly

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  1. Emily F. Solly
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  2. Ingo Schöning
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  3. Nadine Herold
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  4. Susan E. Trumbore
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Correspondence to Emily F. Solly.

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Responsible Editor: Kees Jan van Groenigen.

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Table S5

Mean± SD of soil pH, soil texture and enzyme activities, in different soil horizons in the three study regions (data from Herold et al. (2014)). Significant differences between study regions are indicated by capital letters and between soil depths by lowercase letters according to Tukey HSD test (p < 0.05). Abbreviations: BG=ß-glucosidase activity, NAG=N-acetylglucosaminidase activity, Phos=phosphatase activity. (DOC 886 kb)

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Solly, E.F., Schöning, I., Herold, N. et al. No depth-dependence of fine root litter decomposition in temperate beech forest soils. Plant Soil 393, 273–282 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-015-2492-7

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