1. Whole-soil warming leads to substantial soil carbon emission in an alpine grassland.
- Author
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Chen, Ying, Qin, Wenkuan, Zhang, Qiufang, Wang, Xudong, Feng, Jiguang, Han, Mengguang, Hou, Yanhui, Zhao, Hongyang, Zhang, Zhenhua, He, Jin-Sheng, Zhu, Biao, and Torn, Margaret
- 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 CO2 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 CO2 efflux by 26% and 37%, respectively, but has a minor effect on root-derived CO2 efflux. Moreover, experimental warming only promotes total soil CO2 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.
- Published
- 2024