Microbial mediation of carbon-cycle feedbacks to climate warming

Aridity threshold in controlling ecosystem nitrogen cycling in arid and semi-arid grasslands

“…In fact, we observed higher abundance of nitrification and denitrification genes with increasing AI (Fig. 4b,c), which can be considered as an indicator of soil nitrification and denitrification rates [23][24][25] , and therefore, gaseous N losses. This result is actually consistent with previous modelled effects of rainfall on rates of N-cycling microbial activities 26 .…”

Microbial community structure mediates response of soil C decomposition to litter addition and warming

“…Despite extensive work on the subject, the degree to which C chemistry alone drives the decomposition of litter and soil in response to elevated temperatures is frequently debated (Giardina and Ryan, 2000;Bol et al, 2003;Fierer et al, 2005;Knorr et al, 2005;Bauer et al, 2008;Conant et al, 2008;Craine et al, 2010;Hopkins et al, 2012;Suseela et al, 2013;Lefevre et al, 2014), as is the response of soil-C to N addition (Melillo et al, 2002;Neff et al, 2002;Auyeung et al, 2013). Part of this confusion may lie in the impact and influence of microbial community structure and function, as it has been shown as a potential driver of soil C turnover in response to N (Billings and Ziegler, 2008;Chen et al, 2014;Kaiser et al, 2014), warming (Bardgett et al, 2008;Balser and Wixon, 2009;Yuste et al, 2011;Zhou et al, 2012;Nie et al, 2013;Ziegler et al, 2013;Hopkins et al, 2014;Wei et al, 2014), and the interactive effects of N and warming (Cusack et al, 2010;Li et al, 2013).…”

“…Finally, we hypothesized that differing microbial communities degrading the same source of soil-derived C would alter the response of soil-C mineralization (and assimilation) to temperature due to observed impacts of microbial community structure upon the response to warming (e.g. Zhou et al, 2012).…”

Soil labile organic carbon and carbon-cycle enzyme activities under different thinning intensities in Chinese fir plantations

“…For example, Bolat (2014) and found thinning increased labile organic carbon, but decreases have been reported in other studies (Schilling et al, 1999;Hassett and Zak, 2005). In addition, because seasonal variations in soil temperature and aboveground vegetation might affect the ability or strategy of microbial decomposers to efficiently use SOC, the thinning effect on labile SOC and enzymatic activities may vary seasonally (Balser and Wixon, 2009;Liptzin and Silver, 2009;Keiblinger et al, 2010;Zhou et al, 2012).…”