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Belowground changes to community structure alter methane-cycling dynamics in Amazonia
- Source :
- Environment International, Vol 145, Iss, Pp 106131-(2020), Repositório Institucional da USP (Biblioteca Digital da Produção Intelectual), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), instacron:USP
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- eScholarship, University of California, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Amazonian rainforest is undergoing increasing rates of deforestation, driven primarily by cattle pasture expansion. Forest-to-pasture conversion has been associated with increases in soil methane (CH4) emission. To better understand the drivers of this change, we measured soil CH4 flux, environmental conditions, and belowground microbial community structure across primary forests, cattle pastures, and secondary forests in two Amazonian regions. We show that pasture soils emit high levels of CH4 (mean: 3454.6±9482.3μg CH4 m-2 d-1), consistent with previous reports, while forest soils on average emit CH4 at modest rates (mean: 9.8±120.5μg CH4 m-2 d-1), but often act as CH4 sinks. We report that secondary forest soils tend to consume CH4 (mean: -10.2±35.7μg CH4 m-2 d-1), demonstrating that pasture CH4 emissions can be reversed. We apply a novel computational approach to identify microbial community attributes associated with flux independent of soil chemistry. While this revealed taxa known to produce or consume CH4 directly (i.e. methanogens and methanotrophs, respectively), the vast majority of identified taxa are not known to cycle CH4. Each land use type had a unique subset of taxa associated with CH4 flux, suggesting that land use change alters CH4 cycling through shifts in microbial community composition. Taken together, we show that microbial composition is crucial for understanding the observed CH4 dynamics and that microorganisms provide explanatory power that cannot be captured by environmental variables.
- Subjects :
- 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Life on Land
Methanogen
010501 environmental sciences
Forests
01 natural sciences
Pasture
Biodiversity-ecosystem function
Microbial ecology
Soil
Deforestation
Animals
Land use, land-use change and forestry
Land use change
lcsh:Environmental sciences
Soil Microbiology
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
General Environmental Science
lcsh:GE1-350
geography
geography.geographical_feature_category
Ecology
USO DO SOLO
Community structure
Methanotroph
Microbial population biology
Soil water
Environmental science
Secondary forest
Cattle
Amazon basin
Cycling
Methane
Brazil
Environmental Sciences
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Environment International, Vol 145, Iss, Pp 106131-(2020), Repositório Institucional da USP (Biblioteca Digital da Produção Intelectual), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), instacron:USP
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....7528a04bfc94eb4beee203a376bc6896