Despite decades of research, how climate warming alters the global flux of soil respiration is still poorly characterized. Here, we use meta-analysis to synthesize 202 soil respiration datasets from 50 ecosystem warming experiments across multiple terrestrial ecosystems. We found that, on average, warming by 2 °C increased soil respiration by 12% during the early warming years, but warming-induced drought partially offset this effect. More significantly, the two components of soil respiration, heterotrophic respiration and autotrophic respiration showed distinct responses. The warming effect on autotrophic respiration was not statistically detectable during the early warming years, but nonetheless decreased with treatment duration. In contrast, warming by 2 °C increased heterotrophic respiration by an average of 21%, and this stimulation remained stable over the warming duration. This result challenged the assumption that microbial activity would acclimate to the rising temperature. Together, our findings demonstrate that distinguishing heterotrophic respiration and autotrophic respiration would allow us better understand and predict the long-term response of soil respiration to warming. The dependence of soil respiration on soil moisture condition also underscores the importance of incorporating warming-induced soil hydrological changes when modeling soil respiration under climate change.

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Abstract. Global change has been shown to alter the amount of above-ground litter inputs to soil greatly, which could cause substantial cascading effects on below-ground biogeochemical cycling. Despite extensive study, there is uncertainty about how changes in above-ground litter inputs affect soil carbon and nutrient turnover and transformation. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis on 70 litter-manipulation experiments in order to assess how changes in above-ground litter inputs alter soil physicochemical properties, carbon dynamics and nutrient cycles. Our results demonstrated that litter removal decreased soil respiration by 34 %, microbial biomass carbon in the mineral soil by 39 % and total carbon in the mineral soil by 10 %, whereas litter addition increased them by 31, 26 and 10 %, respectively. This suggests that greater litter inputs increase the soil carbon sink despite higher rates of carbon release and transformation. Total nitrogen and extractable inorganic nitrogen in the mineral soil decreased by 17 and 30 %, respectively, under litter removal, but were not altered by litter addition. Overall, litter manipulation had a significant impact upon soil temperature and moisture, but not soil pH; litter inputs were more crucial in buffering soil temperature and moisture fluctuations in grassland than in forest. Compared to other ecosystems, tropical and subtropical forests were more sensitive to variation in litter inputs, as altered litter inputs affected the turnover and accumulation of soil carbon and nutrients more substantially over a shorter time period. Our study demonstrates that although the magnitude of responses differed greatly among ecosystems, the direction of the responses was very similar across different ecosystems. Interactions between plant productivity and below-ground biogeochemical cycling need to be taken into account to predict ecosystem responses to environmental change.

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Abstract. Alpine wetland meadow could functions as a carbon sink due to it high soil organic content and low decomposition. However, the magnitude and dynamics of carbon stock in alpine wetland ecosystems are not well quantified. Therefore, understanding how environmental variables affect the processes that regulate carbon fluxes in alpine wetland meadow on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is critical. To address this issue, Gross Primary Production (GPP), Ecosystem Respiration (R eco ), and Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE) were examined in an alpine wetland meadow using the eddy covariance method from October 2003 to December 2006 at the Haibei Research Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Seasonal patterns of GPP and R eco were closely associated with leaf area index (LAI). The R eco showed a positive exponential to soil temperature and relatively low R eco occurred during the non-growing season after a rain event. This result is inconsistent with the result observed in alpine shrubland meadow. In total, annual GPP were estimated at 575.7, 682.9, and 630.97 g C m −2 in 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively. Meanwhile, the R eco were equal to 676.8, 726.4, 808.2 g C m −2 , and thus the NEE were 101.1, 44.0 and 173.2 g C m −2 . These results indicated that the alpine wetland meadow was a moderately source of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). The observed carbon dioxide fluxes in the alpine wetland meadow were higher than other alpine meadow such as Kobresia humilis meadow and shrubland meadow.

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