Biocrusts modulate warming and rainfall exclusion effects on soil respiration in a semi-arid grassland.

ABSTRACT: Soil surface communities composed of cyanobacteria, algae, mosses, liverworts, fungi, bacteria and lichens (biocrusts) largely affect soil respiration in dryland ecosystems. Climate change is expected to have large effects on biocrusts and associated ecosystem processes. However, few studies so far have experimentally assessed how expected changes in temperature and rainfall will affect soil respiration in biocrust-dominated ecosystems. We evaluated the impacts of biocrust development, increased air temperature and decreased precipitation on soil respiration dynamics during dry (2009) and wet (2010) years, and investigated the relative importance of soil temperature and moisture as environmental drivers of soil respiration, in a semiarid grassland from central Spain. Soil respiration rates

SUBMITTER: Escolar C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4405768 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature