Microbial community composition explains soil respiration responses to changing carbon inputs along an Andes-to-Amazon elevation gradient.

ABSTRACT: 1. The Andes are predicted to warm by 3-5 °C this century with the potential to alter the processes regulating carbon (C) cycling in these tropical forest soils. This rapid warming is expected to stimulate soil microbial respiration and change plant species distributions, thereby affecting the quantity and quality of C inputs to the soil and influencing the quantity of soil-derived CO₂ released to the atmosphere. 2. We studied tropical lowland, premontane and montane forest soils taken from along a 3200-m elevation gradient located in south-east Andean Peru. We determined how soil microbial communities and abiotic soil properties differed with elevation. We then examined how these differences in microbial composition and soil abiotic properties affected soil C-cycling processes,

SUBMITTER: Whitaker J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4263258 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature