To date, most research that has examined the effect of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) on litter decomposition has focused on changes in the leaf litter quality of individual species. Results from California grasslands indicate that other CO2 responses may have greater consequences for decomposition rates. For instance, CO2-driven […]
Soil carbon (C) is a critical component of Earth system models (ESMs), and its diverse representations are a major source of the large spread across models in the terrestrial C sink from the third to fifth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Improving soil C projections […]
Growth and mortality of microorganisms have been characterized through DNA stable isotope probing (SIP) with 18O-water in soils from a range of ecosystems. Conventional SIP has been improved by sequencing a marker gene in all fractions retrieved from an ultracentrifuge tube to produce taxon density curves, which allow estimating the […]
In controlled N-nutrition experiments, differences in δ 15N composition of leaves and roots are regularly found. In this paper we report results from a survey of nitrogen stable isotope signatures of leaves and roots of 16 plant species growing under natural conditions in a meadow and a forest understorey, which […]
Methane consumption by temperate forest soils is a major sink for this important greenhouse gas, but little is known about how tree species influence CH4 uptake by soils. Here, we show that six common tree species in Siberian boreal and temperate forests significantly affect potential CH4 consumption in laboratory microcosms. […]
Models project that land ecosystems may be able take up a considerable proportion of the carbon dioxide released by human activities, thereby counteracting the anthropogenic emissions. In their Perspective, Hungate et al. argue that these carbon uptake estimates are too high because the models do not take other nutrients such […]
Rising atmospheric CO2 and temperatures are probably altering ecosystem carbon cycling, causing both positive and negative feedbacks to climate. Below-ground processes play a key role in the global carbon (C) cycle because they regulate storage of large quantities of C, and are potentially very sensitive to direct and indirect effects […]
Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (Ca), a product of fossil fuel burning, land-use change, and cement manufacture, is expected to cause a large carbon sink in land ecosystems, partly mitigating human-driven climate change (1). Increasing biological nitrogen fixation with rising Ca has been invoked as a means to provide the N […]
[1] We reviewed responses of nitrification, denitrification, and soil N2O efflux to elevated CO2, N availability, and temperature, based on published experimental results. We used meta-analysis to estimate the magnitude of response of soil N2O emissions, nitrifying enzyme activity (NEA), denitrifying enzyme activity (DEA), and net and gross nitrification across experiments. […]
Rising levels of atmospheric CO2 are thought to increase C sinks in terrestrial ecosystems. The potential of these sinks to mitigate CO2 emissions, however, may be constrained by nutrients. By using metaanalysis, we found that elevated CO2 only causes accumulation of soil C when N is added at rates well […]