14 C evidence that millennial and fast-cycling soil carbon are equally sensitive to warming
The Arctic is expected to shift from a sink to a source of atmospheric CO 2 this century due to climate-induced increases in soil carbon mineralization1. The magnitude of this effect remains uncertain, largely because temperature sensitivities of organic matter decomposition and the distribution of...
| Published in: | Nature Climate Change |
|---|---|
| Main Authors: | , |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
2022
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1572020 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1572020 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0468-y |
| Summary: | The Arctic is expected to shift from a sink to a source of atmospheric CO 2 this century due to climate-induced increases in soil carbon mineralization1. The magnitude of this effect remains uncertain, largely because temperature sensitivities of organic matter decomposition and the distribution of these temperature sensitivities across soil carbon pools are not well understood. Here, a new analytical method with natural abundance radiocarbon was used to evaluate temperature sensitivities across soil carbon pools. With soils from $Utqia\dot{g}vik$ (formerly Barrow), Alaska, an incubation experiment was used to evaluate soil carbon age and decomposability, disentangle the effects of temperature and substrate depletion on carbon mineralization, and compare temperature sensitivities of fast-cycling and slow-cycling carbon. Old, historically stable carbon was shown to be vulnerable to decomposition under warming. Using radiocarbon to differentiate between slow-cycling and fast-cycling carbon, temperature sensitivity was found to be invariant among pools, with a Q 10 of ~2 irrespective of native decomposition rate. Lastly, these findings suggest that mechanisms other than chemical recalcitrance mediate the effect of warming on soil carbon mineralization. |
|---|