Measuring basal soil respiration across Europe: Do incubation temperature and incubation period matter?

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe European Commission recognises the essential role of soil biology in soil functioning and delivery of ecosystem services, but information is currently lacking evaluate of how these vary across soil and land-use types at a European scale. This study evaluated the measurement of the initial rate of soil basal respiration (BR) as a potential biological indicator of ecosystem service provision. The purpose of this study was to test ISO 16072:2002 (Soil Quality: Laboratory methods for the determining of microbial soil respiration). In the literature a range of pre-incubation temperatures (pre-inc) and experimental incubation temperatures (exp-inc) have been applied when using the ISO method for the establishment of basal respiration. This study evaluated whether the range of temperatures applied during pre-and exp-incubation had a significant effect on the rate of respiration determined when following the protocol established in ISO 16072:2002. The evaluation was carried out on a pedo-climatic gradient spanning ten countries across Europe and covering four biogeographical regions. Three sites were sampled in each country providing a range of soil and land-use parameters. Our results suggest that experimental incubation temperatures of 20• C or above should be used in the application of the methodology ISO 16072:2002 (incubation at 15• C resulted in erratic variation between replicates). However, pre-incubation temperature did not affect the soil basal respiration rate, when following the standard recommendations. The time interval with the best prediction of the initial rate of basal respiration was 6 h.

Soil biodiversity, biological indicators and soil ecosystem services—an overview of European approaches

“…Among the objectives of the ongoing FP7 project Ecofinders are the standardisation of methodologies for the assessment of biological soil indicators, and characterisation of normal operating ranges for soil biodiversity according to climatic zones, soil types and land uses across Europe [45]. The increasing availability of ISO standards [41][42][43] for sampling procedures and analyses is an important step towards homogenization of operational procedures, but further work is still required in this field [9,46].…”

Basal Respiration as a Proxy to Understand Spatial Trends in CO2 Emissions in the Moscow Region

“…This was also confirmed by the results obtained at the test area. High topsoil BR values reported for Luvic Chernozems, Dystric Histosols and Orthic Podzols is in good coherence with SOC patterns described for the bioclimatic and soil zones in the region [50; 59] confirming the concept of BR as an indicator for respiration of soil organic matter -based microbes [15]. Different spatial variability described by CV for observed land-use types with the highest heterogeneity of BR in urban area also confirm existing opinion on high patchiness of urban environment [28; 56].…”

“…Total Rs includes autotrophic respiration of root systems and root-associated organisms and heterotrophic respiration of free-leaving microorganisms in the soil [14; 20], whereas BR refers only for the heterotrophic component. Moreover, disturbing and pre-incubation procedures influence the CO 2 production by microorganisms [15] and makes comparison between absolute values of BR and in situ Rs rather challenging.…”

A method of establishing a transect for biodiversity and ecosystem function monitoring across Europe

“…Of the 81 sites, 94% of samples were received, processed, couriered to partner institutes, and analysed for time-dependent soil organism parameters within four weeks of sampling as per recommendations in the literature (Creamer et al, 2014). The remaining 6% (5 samples) were held at the sampling institute and did not enter sample processing until four weeks after sampling.…”