Soil microbial carbon and nutrient constraints are driven more by climate and soil physicochemical properties than by nutrient addition in forest ecosystems

Publication date: Available online 4 November 2019Source: Soil Biology and BiochemistryAuthor(s): Xin Jing, Xiao Chen, Jingyun Fang, Chengjun Ji, Haihua Shen, Chengyang Zheng, Biao ZhuAbstractSoil enzymes are indicative of soil microbial carbon (C) and nutrient limitations. They are playing an important role in global C and nutrient cycles. However, we know little about whether soil microbial C and nutrient limitations are pervasive across broad spatial scales, and how soil enzymes respond to the addition of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Here we used a nutrient addition network across eight forest ecosystems ranging from temperate forests to tropical forests in eastern China and conducted a vector analysis using soil enzymatic stoichiometry to examine the spatial distributions of soil microbial C and nutrient limitations. We also examined the effect of nutrient addition on the extent of soil microbial resource use limitation. Our results showed that soil microbial C limitation was greater in the temperate forests than in the tropical forests, but did not vary with soil depth. Soil microbial P vs. N limitation decreased with latitude, while increased with soil depth. We found a negative relationship between soil microbial C limitation and the relative P vs. N limitation, and the strength of the negative relationship decreased with soil depth. Furthermore, we found that climate (mean annual precipitation and temperature), soil pH and soil nutrients were significantly correla...
Source: Soil Biology and Biochemistry - Category: Biology Source Type: research