Temperature sensitivity of organic matter decomposition of permafrost-region soils during laboratory incubations

• Main Authors: Bracho, Rosvel, Natali, Susan, Pegoraro, Elaine, Crummer, Kathryn G, Schädel, Christina, Celis, Gerardo, Hale, Lauren, Wu, Liyou, Yin, Huaqun, Tiedje, James M, Konstantinidis, Konstantinos T, Luo, Yiqi, Zhou, Jizhong, Schuur, Edward AG
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: eScholarship, University of California 2016
• Subjects: Climate Action; Temperature sensitivity (Q(10)); Tundra; Organic matter decomposition; Carbon pools; GeoChip; Environmental Sciences; Biological Sciences; Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences; Agronomy & Agriculture; permafrost
• Online Access: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0gb6s8jz

Permafrost soils contain more than 1300Pg of carbon (C), twice the amount of C in the atmosphere. Temperatures in higher latitudes are increasing, inducing permafrost thaw and subsequent microbial decomposition of previously frozen C, which will most likely feed back to climate warming through release of the greenhouse gases CO2 and CH4. Understanding the temperature sensitivity (Q10) and dynamics of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition under warming is essential to predict the future state of the climate system. Alaskan tundra soils from the discontinuous permafrost zone were exposed to in situ experimental warming for two consecutive winters, increasing soil temperature by 2.3°C down to 40cm in the soil profile. Soils obtained at three depths (0–15, 15–25 and 45–55cm) from the experimental warming site were incubated under aerobic conditions at 15°C and 25°C over 365 days in the laboratory. Carbon fluxes were measured periodically and dynamics of SOM decomposition, C pool sizes, and decay rates were estimated. Q10 was estimated using both a short-term temperature manipulation (Q10-ST) performed at 14, 100 and 280 days of incubation and via the equal C method (Q10-EC, ratio of time taken for a soil to respire a given amount of C), calculated continuously. At the same time points, functional diversities of the soil microbial communities were monitored for all incubation samples using a microbial functional gene array, GeoChip 5.0. Each array contains over 80,000 probes targeting microbial functional genes involved in biogeochemical cycling of major nutrients, remediation strategies, pathogenicity and other important environmental functions. Of these, over 20,000 probes target genes involved in the degradation of varying C substrates and can be used to quantify the relative gene abundances and functional gene diversities related to soil organic matter turnover. The slow decomposing C pool (CS), which represented close to 95% of total C in the top 25cm soils, had a higher Q10 than the fast decomposing C pool ...