1
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Shao S, Sulman BN. Eco-evolutionary insights into microbial litter decomposition. New Phytol 2024. [PMID: 38622778 DOI: 10.1111/nph.19746] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/17/2024]
Affiliation(s)
- Siya Shao
- Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
- Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85719, USA
| | - Benjamin N Sulman
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, 37830, USA
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2
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Novick KA, Ficklin DL, Baldocchi D, Davis KJ, Ghezzehei TA, Konings AG, MacBean N, Raoult N, Scott RL, Shi Y, Sulman BN, Wood JD. Confronting the water potential information gap. Nat Geosci 2022; 15:158-164. [PMID: 35300262 PMCID: PMC8923290 DOI: 10.1038/s41561-022-00909-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2021] [Accepted: 02/02/2022] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Water potential directly controls the function of leaves, roots, and microbes, and gradients in water potential drive water flows throughout the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. Notwithstanding its clear relevance for many ecosystem processes, soil water potential is rarely measured in-situ, and plant water potential observations are generally discrete, sparse, and not yet aggregated into accessible databases. These gaps limit our conceptual understanding of biophysical responses to moisture stress and inject large uncertainty into hydrologic and land surface models. Here, we outline the conceptual and predictive gains that could be made with more continuous and discoverable observations of water potential in soils and plants. We discuss improvements to sensor technologies that facilitate in situ characterization of water potential, as well as strategies for building new networks that aggregate water potential data across sites. We end by highlighting novel opportunities for linking more representative site-level observations of water potential to remotely-sensed proxies. Together, these considerations offer a roadmap for clearer links between ecohydrological processes and the water potential gradients that have the 'potential' to substantially reduce conceptual and modeling uncertainties.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kimberly A. Novick
- O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University – Bloomington. Bloomington, IN USA
| | - Darren L. Ficklin
- Department of Geography, Indiana University – Bloomington. Bloomington, IN USA
| | - Dennis Baldocchi
- Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Kenneth J. Davis
- Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
| | - Teamrat A. Ghezzehei
- Life and Environmental Sciences Department, University of California – Merced. Merced, CA, USA
| | | | - Natasha MacBean
- Department of Geography, Indiana University – Bloomington. Bloomington, IN USA
| | - Nina Raoult
- Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement. Paris, France
| | - Russell L. Scott
- Southwest Watershed Research Center, USDA – Agricultural Research Service. Tucson, AZ, USA
| | - Yuning Shi
- Department of Plant Science. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
| | - Benjamin N. Sulman
- Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Oak Ridge, TN, USA
| | - Jeffrey D. Wood
- School of Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
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3
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Waring BG, Sulman BN, Reed S, Smith AP, Averill C, Creamer CA, Cusack DF, Hall SJ, Jastrow JD, Jilling A, Kemner KM, Kleber M, Liu XJA, Pett-Ridge J, Schulz M. Response to "Connectivity and pore accessibility in models of soil carbon cycling". Glob Chang Biol 2021; 27:e15-e16. [PMID: 34407279 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15850] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2021] [Accepted: 08/09/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Bonnie G Waring
- Grantham Institute on Climate and the Environment, Imperial College London, London, UK
| | - Benjamin N Sulman
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA
| | - Sasha Reed
- Southwest Biological Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Moab, Utah, USA
| | - A Peyton Smith
- Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA
| | - Colin Averill
- Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
| | | | - Daniela F Cusack
- Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Warner College of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
| | - Steven J Hall
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA
| | - Julie D Jastrow
- Environmental Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois, USA
| | - Andrea Jilling
- Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA
| | - Kenneth M Kemner
- Biosciences Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois, USA
| | - Markus Kleber
- Department of Crop and Soil Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA
| | - Xiao-Jun Allen Liu
- Department of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Jennifer Pett-Ridge
- Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, USA
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4
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Jian J, Bond-Lamberty B, Hao D, Sulman BN, Patel KF, Zheng J, Dorheim K, Pennington SC, Hartman MD, Warner D, Wieder WR. Leveraging observed soil heterotrophic respiration fluxes as a novel constraint on global-scale models. Glob Chang Biol 2021; 27:5392-5403. [PMID: 34241937 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15795] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/22/2020] [Accepted: 06/27/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Microbially explicit models may improve understanding and projections of carbon dynamics in response to future climate change, but their fidelity in simulating global-scale soil heterotrophic respiration (RH ), a stringent test for soil biogeochemical models, has never been evaluated. We used statistical global RH products, as well as 7821 daily site-scale RH measurements, to evaluate the spatiotemporal performance of one first-order decay model (CASA-CNP) and two microbially explicit biogeochemical models (CORPSE and MIMICS) that were forced by two different input datasets. CORPSE and MIMICS did not provide any measurable performance improvement; instead, the models were highly sensitive to the input data used to drive them. Spatial variability in RH fluxes was generally well simulated except in the northern middle latitudes (~50°N) and arid regions; models captured the seasonal variability of RH well, but showed more divergence in tropic and arctic regions. Our results demonstrate that the next generation of biogeochemical models shows promise but also needs to be improved for realistic spatiotemporal variability of RH . Finally, we emphasize the importance of net primary production, soil moisture, and soil temperature inputs, and that jointly evaluating soil models for their spatial (global scale) and temporal (site scale) performance provides crucial benchmarks for improving biogeochemical models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jinshi Jian
- State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland-College Park, College Park, MD, USA
| | - Ben Bond-Lamberty
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland-College Park, College Park, MD, USA
| | - Dalei Hao
- Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
| | - Benjamin N Sulman
- Climate Change Science Institute and Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
| | - Kaizad F Patel
- Biological Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
| | - Jianqiu Zheng
- Biological Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
| | - Kalyn Dorheim
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland-College Park, College Park, MD, USA
| | - Stephanie C Pennington
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland-College Park, College Park, MD, USA
| | - Melannie D Hartman
- Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
- Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
| | - Dan Warner
- Delaware Geological Survey, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
| | - William R Wieder
- Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
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5
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Waring BG, Sulman BN, Reed S, Smith AP, Averill C, Creamer CA, Cusack DF, Hall SJ, Jastrow JD, Jilling A, Kemner KM, Kleber M, Allen Liu XJ, Pett-Ridge J, Schulz M. Response to 'Stochastic and deterministic interpretation of pool models'. Glob Chang Biol 2021; 27:e11-e12. [PMID: 33660887 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15580] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2021] [Accepted: 02/25/2021] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Bonnie G Waring
- Grantham Institute on Climate and the Environment, Imperial College London, London, UK
| | - Benjamin N Sulman
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
| | - Sasha Reed
- U.S. Geological Survey, Southwest Biological Science Center, Moab, UT, USA
| | - A Peyton Smith
- Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
| | - Colin Averill
- Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
| | | | - Daniela F Cusack
- Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Warner College of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
| | - Steven J Hall
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
| | - Julie D Jastrow
- Environmental Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA
| | - Andrea Jilling
- Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA
| | - Kenneth M Kemner
- Biosciences Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA
| | - Markus Kleber
- Department of Crop and Soil Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
| | - Xiao-Jun Allen Liu
- Department of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA
| | - Jennifer Pett-Ridge
- Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA
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6
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Craig ME, Mayes MA, Sulman BN, Walker AP. Biological mechanisms may contribute to soil carbon saturation patterns. Glob Chang Biol 2021; 27:2633-2644. [PMID: 33668074 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15584] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/26/2020] [Accepted: 02/04/2021] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) storage is a key strategy to mitigate rising atmospheric CO2 , yet SOC pools often appear to saturate, or increase at a declining rate, as carbon (C) inputs increase. Soil C saturation is commonly hypothesized to result from the finite amount of reactive mineral surface area available for retaining SOC, and is accordingly represented in SOC models as a physicochemically determined SOC upper limit. However, mineral-associated SOC is largely microbially generated. In this perspective, we present the hypothesis that apparent SOC saturation patterns could emerge as a result of ecological constraints on microbial biomass-for example, via competition or predation-leading to reduced C flow through microbes and a reduced rate of mineral-associated SOC formation as soil C inputs increase. Microbially explicit SOC models offer an opportunity to explore this hypothesis, yet most of these models predict linear microbial biomass increases with C inputs and insensitivity of SOC to input rates. Synthesis of 54 C addition studies revealed constraints on microbial biomass as C inputs increase. Different hypotheses limiting microbial density were embedded in a three-pool SOC model without explicit limits on mineral surface area. As inputs increased, the model demonstrated either no change, linear, or apparently saturating increases in mineral-associated and particulate SOC pools. Taken together, our results suggest that microbial constraints are common and could lead to reduced mineral-associated SOC formation as input rates increase. We conclude that SOC responses to altered C inputs-or any environmental change-are influenced by the ecological factors that limit microbial populations, allowing for a wider range of potential SOC responses to stimuli. Understanding how biotic versus abiotic factors contribute to these patterns will better enable us to predict and manage soil C dynamics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew E Craig
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
| | - Melanie A Mayes
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
| | - Benjamin N Sulman
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
| | - Anthony P Walker
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
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7
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Billings SA, Lajtha K, Malhotra A, Berhe AA, de Graaff MA, Earl S, Fraterrigo J, Georgiou K, Grandy S, Hobbie SE, Moore JAM, Nadelhoffer K, Pierson D, Rasmussen C, Silver WL, Sulman BN, Weintraub S, Wieder W. Soil organic carbon is not just for soil scientists: measurement recommendations for diverse practitioners. Ecol Appl 2021; 31:e02290. [PMID: 33426701 DOI: 10.1002/eap.2290] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2020] [Revised: 08/05/2020] [Accepted: 10/05/2020] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Soil organic carbon (SOC) regulates terrestrial ecosystem functioning, provides diverse energy sources for soil microorganisms, governs soil structure, and regulates the availability of organically bound nutrients. Investigators in increasingly diverse disciplines recognize how quantifying SOC attributes can provide insight about ecological states and processes. Today, multiple research networks collect and provide SOC data, and robust, new technologies are available for managing, sharing, and analyzing large data sets. We advocate that the scientific community capitalize on these developments to augment SOC data sets via standardized protocols. We describe why such efforts are important and the breadth of disciplines for which it will be helpful, and outline a tiered approach for standardized sampling of SOC and ancillary variables that ranges from simple to more complex. We target scientists ranging from those with little to no background in soil science to those with more soil-related expertise, and offer examples of the ways in which the resulting data can be organized, shared, and discoverable.
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Affiliation(s)
- S A Billings
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Kansas Biological Survey, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 66047, USA
| | - K Lajtha
- Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, 97331, USA
| | - A Malhotra
- Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305, USA
| | - A A Berhe
- Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of California, Merced, Merced, California, 95344, USA
| | - M-A de Graaff
- Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, 83725, USA
| | - S Earl
- Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85281, USA
| | - J Fraterrigo
- Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, and Program in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, 61820, USA
| | - K Georgiou
- Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305, USA
| | - S Grandy
- Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, 03824, USA
| | - S E Hobbie
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55455, USA
| | - J A M Moore
- Bioscience Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 37830, USA
| | - K Nadelhoffer
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48109, USA
| | - D Pierson
- Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, 97331, USA
| | - C Rasmussen
- Department of Environmental Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85721, USA
| | - W L Silver
- Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, 94720, USA
| | - B N Sulman
- Climate Change Science Institute and Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 37830, USA
| | - S Weintraub
- National Ecological Observatory Network, Batelle, Boulder, Colorado, 80309, USA
| | - W Wieder
- Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, 80307, USA
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, 80303, USA
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8
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Waring BG, Sulman BN, Reed S, Smith AP, Averill C, Creamer CA, Cusack DF, Hall SJ, Jastrow JD, Jilling A, Kemner KM, Kleber M, Liu XJA, Pett-Ridge J, Schulz M. From pools to flow: The PROMISE framework for new insights on soil carbon cycling in a changing world. Glob Chang Biol 2020; 26:6631-6643. [PMID: 33064359 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15365] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/26/2020] [Accepted: 09/11/2020] [Indexed: 05/02/2023]
Abstract
Soils represent the largest terrestrial reservoir of organic carbon, and the balance between soil organic carbon (SOC) formation and loss will drive powerful carbon-climate feedbacks over the coming century. To date, efforts to predict SOC dynamics have rested on pool-based models, which assume classes of SOC with internally homogenous physicochemical properties. However, emerging evidence suggests that soil carbon turnover is not dominantly controlled by the chemistry of carbon inputs, but rather by restrictions on microbial access to organic matter in the spatially heterogeneous soil environment. The dynamic processes that control the physicochemical protection of carbon translate poorly to pool-based SOC models; as a result, we are challenged to mechanistically predict how environmental change will impact movement of carbon between soils and the atmosphere. Here, we propose a novel conceptual framework to explore controls on belowground carbon cycling: Probabilistic Representation of Organic Matter Interactions within the Soil Environment (PROMISE). In contrast to traditional model frameworks, PROMISE does not attempt to define carbon pools united by common thermodynamic or functional attributes. Rather, the PROMISE concept considers how SOC cycling rates are governed by the stochastic processes that influence the proximity between microbial decomposers and organic matter, with emphasis on their physical location in the soil matrix. We illustrate the applications of this framework with a new biogeochemical simulation model that traces the fate of individual carbon atoms as they interact with their environment, undergoing biochemical transformations and moving through the soil pore space. We also discuss how the PROMISE framework reshapes dialogue around issues related to SOC management in a changing world. We intend the PROMISE framework to spur the development of new hypotheses, analytical tools, and model structures across disciplines that will illuminate mechanistic controls on the flow of carbon between plant, soil, and atmospheric pools.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bonnie G Waring
- Department of Biology and Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA
| | - Benjamin N Sulman
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
| | - Sasha Reed
- U.S. Geological Survey, Southwest Biological Science Center, Moab, UT, USA
| | - A Peyton Smith
- Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
| | - Colin Averill
- Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
| | | | - Daniela F Cusack
- Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Warner College of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
| | - Steven J Hall
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
| | - Julie D Jastrow
- Environmental Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA
| | - Andrea Jilling
- Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA
| | - Kenneth M Kemner
- Biosciences Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA
| | - Markus Kleber
- Department of Crop and Soil Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
| | - Xiao-Jun Allen Liu
- Department of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA
| | - Jennifer Pett-Ridge
- Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA
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9
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Affiliation(s)
- Jessica A. M. Moore
- Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee Knoxville TN USA
| | - Benjamin N. Sulman
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge TN USA
| | - Melanie A. Mayes
- Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge TN USA
| | - Courtney M. Patterson
- Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee Knoxville TN USA
| | - Aimée T. Classen
- The Rubenstein School of Environment & Natural Resources University of Vermont Burlington VT USA
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10
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Anderegg WRL, Konings AG, Trugman AT, Yu K, Bowling DR, Gabbitas R, Karp DS, Pacala S, Sperry JS, Sulman BN, Zenes N. Hydraulic diversity of forests regulates ecosystem resilience during drought. Nature 2018; 561:538-541. [PMID: 30232452 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0539-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 120] [Impact Index Per Article: 20.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2017] [Accepted: 08/14/2018] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Plants influence the atmosphere through fluxes of carbon, water and energy1, and can intensify drought through land-atmosphere feedback effects2-4. The diversity of plant functional traits in forests, especially physiological traits related to water (hydraulic) transport, may have a critical role in land-atmosphere feedback, particularly during drought. Here we combine 352 site-years of eddy covariance measurements from 40 forest sites, remote-sensing observations of plant water content and plant functional-trait data to test whether the diversity in plant traits affects the response of the ecosystem to drought. We find evidence that higher hydraulic diversity buffers variation in ecosystem flux during dry periods across temperate and boreal forests. Hydraulic traits were the predominant significant predictors of cross-site patterns in drought response. By contrast, standard leaf and wood traits, such as specific leaf area and wood density, had little explanatory power. Our results demonstrate that diversity in the hydraulic traits of trees mediates ecosystem resilience to drought and is likely to have an important role in future ecosystem-atmosphere feedback effects in a changing climate.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Anna T Trugman
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
| | - Kailiang Yu
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
| | - David R Bowling
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
| | - Robert Gabbitas
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
| | - Daniel S Karp
- Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA
| | - Stephen Pacala
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
| | - John S Sperry
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
| | - Benjamin N Sulman
- Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.,School of Natural Sciences, University of California, Merced, Merced, CA, USA
| | - Nicole Zenes
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
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11
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Wieder WR, Hartman MD, Sulman BN, Wang YP, Koven CD, Bonan GB. Carbon cycle confidence and uncertainty: Exploring variation among soil biogeochemical models. Glob Chang Biol 2018; 24:1563-1579. [PMID: 29120516 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13979] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2017] [Accepted: 10/18/2017] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
Emerging insights into factors responsible for soil organic matter stabilization and decomposition are being applied in a variety of contexts, but new tools are needed to facilitate the understanding, evaluation, and improvement of soil biogeochemical theory and models at regional to global scales. To isolate the effects of model structural uncertainty on the global distribution of soil carbon stocks and turnover times we developed a soil biogeochemical testbed that forces three different soil models with consistent climate and plant productivity inputs. The models tested here include a first-order, microbial implicit approach (CASA-CNP), and two recently developed microbially explicit models that can be run at global scales (MIMICS and CORPSE). When forced with common environmental drivers, the soil models generated similar estimates of initial soil carbon stocks (roughly 1,400 Pg C globally, 0-100 cm), but each model shows a different functional relationship between mean annual temperature and inferred turnover times. Subsequently, the models made divergent projections about the fate of these soil carbon stocks over the 20th century, with models either gaining or losing over 20 Pg C globally between 1901 and 2010. Single-forcing experiments with changed inputs, temperature, and moisture suggest that uncertainty associated with freeze-thaw processes as well as soil textural effects on soil carbon stabilization were larger than direct temperature uncertainties among models. Finally, the models generated distinct projections about the timing and magnitude of seasonal heterotrophic respiration rates, again reflecting structural uncertainties that were related to environmental sensitivities and assumptions about physicochemical stabilization of soil organic matter. By providing a computationally tractable and numerically consistent framework to evaluate models we aim to better understand uncertainties among models and generate insights about factors regulating the turnover of soil organic matter.
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Affiliation(s)
- William R Wieder
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
- Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
| | - Melannie D Hartman
- Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
- Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
| | - Benjamin N Sulman
- Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
| | - Ying-Ping Wang
- South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China
- CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Aspendale, Vic., Australia
| | - Charles D Koven
- Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Gordon B Bonan
- Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
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12
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Bailey VL, Bond-Lamberty B, DeAngelis K, Grandy AS, Hawkes CV, Heckman K, Lajtha K, Phillips RP, Sulman BN, Todd-Brown KEO, Wallenstein MD. Soil carbon cycling proxies: Understanding their critical role in predicting climate change feedbacks. Glob Chang Biol 2018; 24:895-905. [PMID: 28991399 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13926] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/15/2017] [Accepted: 09/07/2017] [Indexed: 05/14/2023]
Abstract
The complexity of processes and interactions that drive soil C dynamics necessitate the use of proxy variables to represent soil characteristics that cannot be directly measured (correlative proxies), or that aggregate information about multiple soil characteristics into one variable (integrative proxies). These proxies have proven useful for understanding the soil C cycle, which is highly variable in both space and time, and are now being used to make predictions of the fate and persistence of C under future climate scenarios. However, the C pools and processes that proxies represent must be thoughtfully considered in order to minimize uncertainties in empirical understanding. This is necessary to capture the full value of a proxy in model parameters and in model outcomes. Here, we provide specific examples of proxy variables that could improve decision-making, and modeling skill, while also encouraging continued work on their mechanistic underpinnings. We explore the use of three common soil proxies used to study soil C cycling: metabolic quotient, clay content, and physical fractionation. We also consider how emerging data types, such as genome-sequence data, can serve as proxies for microbial community activities. By examining some broad assumptions in soil C cycling with the proxies already in use, we can develop new hypotheses and specify criteria for new and needed proxies.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Ben Bond-Lamberty
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Joint Global Change Research Institute, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
| | - Kristen DeAngelis
- Department of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA
| | - A Stuart Grandy
- Department of Natural Resources and Environment, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
| | - Christine V Hawkes
- Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
| | - Kate Heckman
- Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Houghton, MI, USA
| | - Kate Lajtha
- Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
| | - Richard P Phillips
- Department of Biology, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA
| | - Benjamin N Sulman
- Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
| | | | - Matthew D Wallenstein
- Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
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Sulman BN, Brzostek ER, Medici C, Shevliakova E, Menge DNL, Phillips RP. Feedbacks between plant N demand and rhizosphere priming depend on type of mycorrhizal association. Ecol Lett 2017; 20:1043-1053. [DOI: 10.1111/ele.12802] [Citation(s) in RCA: 76] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/28/2017] [Revised: 05/12/2017] [Accepted: 06/05/2017] [Indexed: 01/25/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Benjamin N. Sulman
- Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department of Geosciences Princeton University Princeton New Jersey USA
| | | | - Chiara Medici
- Princeton Environmental Institute Princeton University Princeton NJ USA
| | | | - Duncan N. L. Menge
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology Columbia University New York NY USA
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14
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Sulman BN, Desai AR, Schroeder NM, Ricciuto D, Barr A, Richardson AD, Flanagan LB, Lafleur PM, Tian H, Chen G, Grant RF, Poulter B, Verbeeck H, Ciais P, Ringeval B, Baker IT, Schaefer K, Luo Y, Weng E. Impact of hydrological variations on modeling of peatland CO2
fluxes: Results from the North American Carbon Program site synthesis. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2012. [DOI: 10.1029/2011jg001862] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/10/2022]
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