Effects of climate change on the delivery of soil‐mediated ecosystem services within the primary sector in temperate ecosystems: a review and New Zealand case study

Abstract

Future human well-being under climate change depends on the ongoing delivery of food, fibre and wood from the land-based primary sector. The ability to deliver these provisioning services depends on soil-based ecosystem services (e.g. carbon, nutrient and water cycling and storage), yet we lack an in-depth understanding of the likely response of soil-based ecosystem services to climate change. We review the current knowledge on this topic for temperate ecosystems, focusing on mechanisms that are likely to underpin differences in climate change responses between four primary sector systems: cropping, intensive grazing, extensive grazing and plantation forestry. We then illustrate how our findings can be applied to assess service delivery under climate change in a specific region, using New Zealand as an example system. Differences in the climate change responses of carbon and nutrient-related services between systems will largely be driven by whether they are reliant on externally added or internally cycled nutrients, the extent to which plant communities could influence responses, and variation in vulnerability to erosion. The ability of soils to regulate water under climate change will mostly be driven by changes in rainfall, but can be influenced by different primary sector systems' vulnerability to soil water repellency and differences in evapotranspiration rates. These changes in regulating services resulted in different potentials for increased biomass production across systems, with intensively managed systems being the most likely to benefit from climate change. Quantitative prediction of net effects of climate change on soil ecosystem services remains a challenge, in part due to knowledge gaps, but also due to the complex interactions between different aspects of climate change. Despite this challenge, it is critical to gain the information required to make such predictions as robust as possible given the fundamental role of soils in supporting human well-being.

Nitrogen Cycling from Increased Soil Organic Carbon Contributes Both Positively and Negatively to Ecosystem Services in Wheat Agro-Ecosystems

“…For example, in grazed pastoral systems considerable increases in SOC (Mg SOC ha −1 ) are possible in a relatively short time (Soussana et al, 2010; Machmuller et al, 2015) and is likely to have greater impacts on ecosystem service provision. Furthermore, climate change is likely to impact on the provision of ecosystem services from soils (Orwin et al, 2015). A similar approach to the one taken in this study could be used to investigate the effects of SOC on a wider range of agro-ecosystems under different climate change scenarios: such a study may enrich our understanding of the effects of SOC on ecosystem service provision.…”

Drought and Carbon Cycling of Grassland Ecosystems under Global Change: A Review

“…N addition enhances within-plot variability in plant size structure at the species level, but did not change total aboveground biomass [109]. Indeed, droughts affect soil respiration by influencing the feedback from soil N pools, because the microbial processes that regulate soil N availability are sensitive to short-term variations in soil moisture [110]. Meanwhile, N and water supplies limit potential NEE.…”

Future changes in fire weather, spring droughts, and false springs across U.S. National Forests and Grasslands

“…, Orwin et al. ). For example, events such as wildfires, which are influenced by weather conditions, can dramatically change the soil, water, and vegetation components of ecosystems and are also a major threat to homes and communities (DeBano et al.…”