Historical precipitation predictably alters the shape and magnitude of microbial functional response to soil moisture
- 25 February 2016
- journal article
- Published by Wiley in Global Change Biology
- Vol. 22 (5), 1957-1964
- https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13219
Abstract
Soil moisture constrains the activity of decomposer soil microorganisms, and in turn the rate at which soil carbon returns to the atmosphere. While increases in soil moisture are generally associated with increased microbial activity, historical climate may constrain current microbial responses to moisture. However, it is not known if variation in the shape and magnitude of microbial functional responses to soil moisture can be predicted from historical climate at regional scales. To address this problem, we measured soil enzyme activity at 12 sites across a broad climate gradient spanning 442 – 887 mm mean annual precipitation. Measurements were made eight times over 21 months to maximize sampling during different moisture conditions. We then fit saturating functions of enzyme activity to soil moisture and extracted half saturation and maximum activity parameter values from model fits. We found that 50% of the variation in maximum activity parameters across sites could be predicted by 30-year mean annual precipitation, an indicator of historical climate, and that the effect is independent of variation in temperature, soil texture, or soil carbon concentration. Based on this finding, we suggest that variation in the shape and magnitude of soil microbial response to soil moisture due to historical climate may be remarkably predictable at regional scales, and this approach may extend to other systems. If historical contingencies on microbial activities prove to be persistent in the face of environmental change, this approach also provides a framework for incorporating historical climate effects into biogeochemical models simulating future global change scenarios.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Science Foundation (DGE‐1110007)
This publication has 49 references indexed in Scilit:
- Soil biotic legacy effects of extreme weather events influence plant invasivenessProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013
- Responses of soil heterotrophic respiration to moisture availability: An exploration of processes and modelsSoil Biology and Biochemistry, 2013
- Pre-exposure to drought increases the resistance of tropical forest soil bacterial communities to extended droughtThe ISME Journal, 2012
- Environmental and stoichiometric controls on microbial carbon‐use efficiency in soilsNew Phytologist, 2012
- TheDualArrhenius andMichaelis–Menten kinetics model for decomposition of soil organic matter at hourly to seasonal time scalesGlobal Change Biology, 2011
- Soil microbial community response to drying and rewetting stress: does historical precipitation regime matter?Biogeochemistry, 2011
- Stoichiometry of soil enzyme activity at global scaleEcology Letters, 2008
- Soil minerals and humic acids alter enzyme stability: implications for ecosystem processesBiogeochemistry, 2006
- Water pulses and biogeochemical cycles in arid and semiarid ecosystemsOecologia, 2004
- Microscale determination of inorganic nitrogen in water and soil extractsCommunications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis, 1995