Nine years of in situ soil warming and topography impact the temperature sensitivity and basal respiration rate of the forest floor in a Canadian boreal forest

Nitrogen availability mediates soil carbon cycling response to climate warming: A meta-analysis

Global climate warming may induce a positive feedback through increasing soil carbon (C) release to the atmosphere. Although warming can affect both C input to and output from soil, direct and convincing evidence illustrating that warming induces a net change in soil C is still lacking. We synthesized the results from field warming experiments at 165 sites across the globe and found that climate warming had no significant effect on soil C stock. On average, warming significantly increased root biomass and soil respiration, but warming effects on root biomass and soil respiration strongly depended on soil nitrogen (N) availability. Under high N availability (soil C:N ratio < 15), warming had no significant effect on root biomass, but promoted the coupling between effect sizes of root biomass and soil C stock. Under relative N limitation (soil C:N ratio > 15), warming significantly enhanced root biomass. However, the enhancement of root biomass did not induce a corresponding C accumulation in soil, possibly because warming promoted microbial CO₂ release that offset the increased root C input. Also, reactive N input alleviated warming-induced C loss from soil, but elevated atmospheric CO₂ or precipitation increase/reduction did not. Together, our findings indicate that the relative availability of soil C to N (i.e., soil C:N ratio) critically mediates warming effects on soil C dynamics, suggesting that its incorporation into C-climate models may improve the prediction of soil C cycling under future global warming scenarios.

Microbial inputs at the litter layer translate climate into altered organic matter properties

Plant litter chemistry is altered during decomposition but it remains unknown if these alterations, and thus the composition of residual litter, will change in response to climate. Selective microbial mineralization of litter components and the accumulation of microbial necromass can drive litter compositional change, but the extent to which these mechanisms respond to climate remains poorly understood. We addressed this knowledge gap by studying needle litter decomposition along a boreal forest climate transect. Specifically, we investigated how the composition and/or metabolism of the decomposer community varies with climate, and if that variation is associated with distinct modifications of litter chemistry during decomposition. We analyzed the composition of microbial phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) in the litter layer and measured natural abundance δ¹³ C_PLFA values as an integrated measure of microbial metabolisms. Changes in litter chemistry and δ¹³ C values were measured in litterbag experiments conducted at each transect site. A warmer climate was associated with higher litter nitrogen concentrations as well as altered microbial community structure (lower fungi:bacteria ratios) and microbial metabolism (higher δ¹³ C_PLFA ). Litter in warmer transect regions accumulated less aliphatic-C (lipids, waxes) and retained more O-alkyl-C (carbohydrates), consistent with enhanced ¹³ C-enrichment in residual litter, than in colder regions. These results suggest that chemical changes during litter decomposition will change with climate, driven primarily by indirect climate effects (e.g., greater nitrogen availability and decreased fungi:bacteria ratios) rather than direct temperature effects. A positive correlation between microbial biomass δ¹³ C values and ¹³ C-enrichment during decomposition suggests that change in litter chemistry is driven more by distinct microbial necromass inputs than differences in the selective removal of litter components. Our study highlights the role that microbial inputs during early litter decomposition can play in shaping surface litter contribution to soil organic matter as it responds to climate warming effects such as greater nitrogen availability.

Influence of hydro-morphologic variables of forested catchments on the increase in DOC concentration in 36 temperate lakes of eastern Canada

In the last decades, a worldwide increase in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations has been observed in temperate and boreal lakes. This phenomenon has several detrimental effects on the aquatic life and affect local C geochemical cycles. In this study, we measured DOC concentration in the water column of 36 lakes located in eastern Canada over a period of 35 years (1983-2017) and assessed the influence of climatic, hydrologic and morphometric variables on both DOC concentrations and on the rate of DOC changes (∆DOC). Our data show that morphometric and hydrologic variables have a stronger direct influence on lake water DOC concentrations than vegetation and climatic variables. DOC concentration strongly increased with the drainage ratio and the surface covered by organic deposits, which together explained 59% of the variance. As expected, we observed a significant increase in lake water DOC concentration in 72% of the surveyed lakes, which averaged 20% over the study period. Meanwhile, lake water SO₄^2- concentration decreased by 60%. ∆DOC was poorly influenced by the rate of changes in lake water SO₄^2- as well as by the rate of changes in mean annual air temperature and precipitation. ∆DOC was more related to the vegetation type and the morphometry of the catchment: a model including the percentage of conifers, terrestrial catchment area and ∆Cl yielded a variance explanation of 39%. This shows that the rate of increase was primarily driven by morphometric variables which did not change over the study period.