Plant species richness regulates soil respiration through changes in productivity.

ABSTRACT: Soil respiration is an important pathway of the C cycle. However, it is still poorly understood how changes in plant community diversity can affect this ecosystem process. Here we used a long-term experiment consisting of a gradient of grassland plant species richness to test for effects of diversity on soil respiration. We hypothesized that plant diversity could affect soil respiration in two ways. On the one hand, more diverse plant communities have been shown to promote plant productivity, which could increase soil respiration. On the other hand, the nutrient concentration in the biomass produced has been shown to decrease with diversity, which could counteract the production-induced increase in soil respiration. Our results clearly show that soil respiration increased with species rich

SUBMITTER: Dias AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2886140 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature