The varied and wide-reaching impacts of climate change are occurring across heterogeneous landscapes characterized by a broad diversity of soil types. Despite the known importance of soils in mediating biogeochemical nutrient cycling, there is little experimental evidence of how soil characteristics may shape aqueous nutrient losses from forest ecosystems under climate change. Our objective was to clarify how soil characteristics modify the impact of climate changes on carbon and nutrient leaching losses in temperate forests. We therefore conducted a field-based mesocosm experiment with replicated warming and snow exclusion treatments on two soils in large (2.4 m diameter), in-field forest sapling mesocosms. We found that nutrient loss responses to warming and snow exclusion treatments frequently varied substantially by soil type. For example, warming and snow exclusion increased nitrogen (N) losses on fine textured soils by up to four times versus controls, but these treatments had no impact on coarse textured soils. Generally, the coarse textured soil, with its lower soil-water holding capacity, had higher nutrient losses (e.g., 12–17 times more total N loss from coarse than fine textured soils), except in the case of phosphate, which had consistently higher losses (23–58%) from the finer textured soil. Furthermore, the mitigation of nutrient loss by increasing sapling biomass varied by soil type and nutrient. Our results suggest that potentially large biogeochemical responses to climate change are strongly mediated by soil characteristics, providing further evidence of the need to consider soil properties in Earth system models for improving nutrient cycling and climate projections.

气候变化的多样而广泛的影响发生在以土壤类型广泛多样为特征的异质景观中。尽管已知土壤在调节生物地球化学养分循环方面的重要性，但很少有实验证据表明土壤特征如何影响气候变化下森林生态系统的水性养分流失。我们的目标是阐明土壤特征如何改变气候变化对温带森林碳和养分流失的影响。因此，我们进行了一项基于田间的中宇宙实验，在两种大面积（直径 2.4 m）的土壤上进行了重复的变暖和除雪处理，现场森林树苗中宇宙。我们发现，对变暖和除雪处理的养分损失反应经常因土壤类型而有很大差异。例如，与对照相比，变暖和除雪使细质地土壤的氮 (N) 损失增加多达四倍，但这些处理对粗质地土壤没有影响。一般来说，具有较低土壤持水能力的粗质地土壤具有较高的养分损失（例如，粗质地土壤的总氮损失是细质地土壤的 12-17 倍），但磷酸盐的情况除外，其始终较高质地较细的土壤造成的损失（23-58%）。此外，通过增加树苗生物量来缓解养分流失因土壤类型和养分而异。我们的研究结果表明，对气候变化的潜在巨大生物地球化学反应是由土壤特征强烈介导的，这进一步证明了在地球系统模型中考虑土壤特性以改善养分循环和气候预测的必要性。