Whole-soil warming leads to substantial soil carbon emission in an alpine grassland.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38802385.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-48736-w and PMC identifier 11130387.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The sensitivity of soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition in seasonally frozen soils, such as alpine ecosystems, to climate warming is a major uncertainty in global carbon cycling. Here we measure soil CO<sub>2</sub> emission during four years (2018-2021) from the whole-soil warming experiment (4 °C for the top 1 m) in an alpine grassland ecosystem. We find that whole-soil warming stimulates total and SOC-derived CO<sub>2</sub> efflux by 26% and 37%, respectively, but has a minor effect on root-derived CO<sub>2</sub> efflux. Moreover, experimental warming only promotes total soil CO<sub>2</sub> efflux by 7-8% on average in the meta-analysis across all grasslands or alpine grasslands globally (none of these experiments were whole-soil warming). We show that whole-soil warming has a much stronger effect on soil carbon emission in the alpine grassland ecosystem than what was reported in previous warming experiments, most of which only heat surface soils.