Alpine soil carbon is vulnerable to rapid microbial decomposition under climate cooling.

ABSTRACT: As climate cooling is increasingly regarded as important natural variability of long-term global warming trends, there is a resurging interest in understanding its impact on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Here, we report a soil transplant experiment from lower to higher elevations in a Tibetan alpine grassland to simulate the impact of cooling on ecosystem community structure and function. Three years of cooling resulted in reduced plant productivity and microbial functional potential (for example, carbon respiration and nutrient cycling). Microbial genetic markers associated with chemically recalcitrant carbon decomposition remained unchanged despite a decrease in genes associated with chemically labile carbon decomposition. As a consequence, cooling-associated changes correlated

SUBMITTER: Wu L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5563962 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature