Responses of soil respiration to different environment factors in semi-arid and arid areas

Abstract

Soil respiration, as one of the key ecological processes, plays an important role in terrestrial ecosystems. Quantitative analysis of soil respiration is critical to assessment of ecosystem carbon budget and responses of soils to global climate change. Semi鄄arid and arid area covers a vast and continuous region and provides special habitats for lives,thus research in environmental factors influence on soil respiration in semi鄄arid and arid area is contributive to estimating soil carbon storage and understanding the process of carbon cycle. This paper summarizes the impacts of the Non鄄biotic factors and biotic factors including soil temperature, soil moisture, precipitation, vegetation type, aboveground and underground biomass, leaf area index, and litter on soil respiration. The interaction of the above environmental factors were analyzed with special focuses on soil temperature, moisture and the Q 10 value of soil respiration based on summarization of related researches. A good deal of literatures and papers indicated that soil temperature and moisture, especially in arid areas, are