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Warming yields distinct accumulation patterns of microbial residues in dry and wet alpine grasslands on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

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Abstract

High altitude alpine grasslands in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) contain high soil organic C (SOC) stocks that are extremely vulnerable to climate warming. Microbial residues are increasingly recognized as a major source of SOC, however, how climate warming affects this component of SOC in this region remains largely unknown. In this study, we examined the response of microbial residues to a 3-year experimental warming and the degree to which they contributed to SOC storage in two Tibetan ecosystems—alpine steppe (AS) and swamp meadow (SM). The number of microbial residues was indicated by amino sugar analysis. Our results revealed that warming yielded divergent microbial residue accumulation that significantly altered their contribution to SOC storage in the two alpine grasslands. Warming increased microbial residue abundance by approximately 17.6% across 0 to 20 cm depth in SM soils, while causing a significant decline (about 6.2%) in AS soils. The higher microbial residue accumulation in SM could lessen potential positive feedbacks from climate warming, while the decrease in microbial residues in AS may indicate greater loss of microbial-derived C inputs in warmed soils. Moreover, we found that warming selectively increased fungal residues as compared with bacterial despite inconsistent responses to warming in the two grasslands. These changes were accompanied by significant shifts in fungal to bacterial residue C ratios and their contribution to SOC pool, indicating an alteration of SOC composition and stability in alpine grassland ecosystems. These findings demonstrate that a microbial-derived C feedback to climate change is ecosystem-specific that alters the direction and magnitude of the microbial community.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Beiluhe Observation and Research Station staff for establishing field sites and for the assistance in the field.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41690142), the National Key Research and Development Program (2017YFD0200100), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20190092), and the Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of NUIST (2018r100).

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  1. Xueli Ding and Shengyun Chen contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Xueli Ding & Bin Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Shengyun Chen

  3. Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, China

    Hongbo He

  4. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Timothy R. Filley

  5. Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    William R. Horwath

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  1. Xueli Ding
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  4. Hongbo He
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Correspondence to Xueli Ding or William R. Horwath.

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Ding, X., Chen, S., Zhang, B. et al. Warming yields distinct accumulation patterns of microbial residues in dry and wet alpine grasslands on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Biol Fertil Soils 56, 881–892 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-020-01474-9

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