Soil Respiration in Tibetan Alpine Grasslands: Belowground Biomass and Soil Moisture, but Not Soil Temperature, Best Explain the Large-Scale Patterns
The Tibetan Plateau is an essential area to study the potential feedback effects of soils to climate change due to the rapid rise in its air temperature in the past several decades and the large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, particularly in the permafrost. Yet it is one of the most un...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3324551 2023-05-15T17:58:18+02:00 Soil Respiration in Tibetan Alpine Grasslands: Belowground Biomass and Soil Moisture, but Not Soil Temperature, Best Explain the Large-Scale Patterns Geng, Yan Wang, Yonghui Yang, Kuo Wang, Shaopeng Zeng, Hui Baumann, Frank Kuehn, Peter Scholten, Thomas He, Jin-Sheng 2012-04-11 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3324551 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22509373 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034968 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3324551 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22509373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034968 Geng et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2012 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034968 2013-09-04T05:29:36Z The Tibetan Plateau is an essential area to study the potential feedback effects of soils to climate change due to the rapid rise in its air temperature in the past several decades and the large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, particularly in the permafrost. Yet it is one of the most under-investigated regions in soil respiration (Rs) studies. Here, Rs rates were measured at 42 sites in alpine grasslands (including alpine steppes and meadows) along a transect across the Tibetan Plateau during the peak growing season of 2006 and 2007 in order to test whether: (1) belowground biomass (BGB) is most closely related to spatial variation in Rs due to high root biomass density, and (2) soil temperature significantly influences spatial pattern of Rs owing to metabolic limitation from the low temperature in cold, high-altitude ecosystems. The average daily mean Rs of the alpine grasslands at peak growing season was 3.92 µmol CO2 m−2 s−1, ranging from 0.39 to 12.88 µmol CO2 m−2 s−1, with average daily mean Rs of 2.01 and 5.49 µmol CO2 m−2 s−1 for steppes and meadows, respectively. By regression tree analysis, BGB, aboveground biomass (AGB), SOC, soil moisture (SM), and vegetation type were selected out of 15 variables examined, as the factors influencing large-scale variation in Rs. With a structural equation modelling approach, we found only BGB and SM had direct effects on Rs, while other factors indirectly affecting Rs through BGB or SM. Most (80%) of the variation in Rs could be attributed to the difference in BGB among sites. BGB and SM together accounted for the majority (82%) of spatial patterns of Rs. Our results only support the first hypothesis, suggesting that models incorporating BGB and SM can improve Rs estimation at regional scale. Text permafrost PubMed Central (PMC) PLoS ONE 7 4 e34968 |
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Research Article Geng, Yan Wang, Yonghui Yang, Kuo Wang, Shaopeng Zeng, Hui Baumann, Frank Kuehn, Peter Scholten, Thomas He, Jin-Sheng Soil Respiration in Tibetan Alpine Grasslands: Belowground Biomass and Soil Moisture, but Not Soil Temperature, Best Explain the Large-Scale Patterns |
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Research Article |
description |
The Tibetan Plateau is an essential area to study the potential feedback effects of soils to climate change due to the rapid rise in its air temperature in the past several decades and the large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, particularly in the permafrost. Yet it is one of the most under-investigated regions in soil respiration (Rs) studies. Here, Rs rates were measured at 42 sites in alpine grasslands (including alpine steppes and meadows) along a transect across the Tibetan Plateau during the peak growing season of 2006 and 2007 in order to test whether: (1) belowground biomass (BGB) is most closely related to spatial variation in Rs due to high root biomass density, and (2) soil temperature significantly influences spatial pattern of Rs owing to metabolic limitation from the low temperature in cold, high-altitude ecosystems. The average daily mean Rs of the alpine grasslands at peak growing season was 3.92 µmol CO2 m−2 s−1, ranging from 0.39 to 12.88 µmol CO2 m−2 s−1, with average daily mean Rs of 2.01 and 5.49 µmol CO2 m−2 s−1 for steppes and meadows, respectively. By regression tree analysis, BGB, aboveground biomass (AGB), SOC, soil moisture (SM), and vegetation type were selected out of 15 variables examined, as the factors influencing large-scale variation in Rs. With a structural equation modelling approach, we found only BGB and SM had direct effects on Rs, while other factors indirectly affecting Rs through BGB or SM. Most (80%) of the variation in Rs could be attributed to the difference in BGB among sites. BGB and SM together accounted for the majority (82%) of spatial patterns of Rs. Our results only support the first hypothesis, suggesting that models incorporating BGB and SM can improve Rs estimation at regional scale. |
format |
Text |
author |
Geng, Yan Wang, Yonghui Yang, Kuo Wang, Shaopeng Zeng, Hui Baumann, Frank Kuehn, Peter Scholten, Thomas He, Jin-Sheng |
author_facet |
Geng, Yan Wang, Yonghui Yang, Kuo Wang, Shaopeng Zeng, Hui Baumann, Frank Kuehn, Peter Scholten, Thomas He, Jin-Sheng |
author_sort |
Geng, Yan |
title |
Soil Respiration in Tibetan Alpine Grasslands: Belowground Biomass and Soil Moisture, but Not Soil Temperature, Best Explain the Large-Scale Patterns |
title_short |
Soil Respiration in Tibetan Alpine Grasslands: Belowground Biomass and Soil Moisture, but Not Soil Temperature, Best Explain the Large-Scale Patterns |
title_full |
Soil Respiration in Tibetan Alpine Grasslands: Belowground Biomass and Soil Moisture, but Not Soil Temperature, Best Explain the Large-Scale Patterns |
title_fullStr |
Soil Respiration in Tibetan Alpine Grasslands: Belowground Biomass and Soil Moisture, but Not Soil Temperature, Best Explain the Large-Scale Patterns |
title_full_unstemmed |
Soil Respiration in Tibetan Alpine Grasslands: Belowground Biomass and Soil Moisture, but Not Soil Temperature, Best Explain the Large-Scale Patterns |
title_sort |
soil respiration in tibetan alpine grasslands: belowground biomass and soil moisture, but not soil temperature, best explain the large-scale patterns |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2012 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3324551 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22509373 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034968 |
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permafrost |
genre_facet |
permafrost |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3324551 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22509373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034968 |
op_rights |
Geng et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034968 |
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