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Global patterns of geo-ecological controls on the response of soil respiration to warming

Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 623–627 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

While soil respiration is known to be controlled by a range of biotic and abiotic factors, its temperature sensitivity in global models is largely related to climate parameters. Here, we show that temperature sensitivity of soil respiration is primarily controlled by interacting soil properties and only secondarily by vegetation traits and plant growth conditions. Temperature was not identified as a primary driver for the response of soil respiration to warming. In contrast, the nonlinearity and large spatial variability of identified controls stress the importance of the interplay among soil, vegetation and climate parameters in controlling warming responses. Global models might predict current soil respiration but not future rates because they neglect the controls exerted by soil development. To accurately predict the response of soil respiration to warming at the global scale, more observational studies across pedogenetically diverse soils are needed rather than focusing on the isolated effect of warming alone.

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Fig. 1: Prediction performance and partial dependence plots of soil Q10 and controlling factors.
Fig. 2: Global soil Q10 prediction and uncertainty map.

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Data availability

Datasets used in this study are deposited in a permanent open access online repository at ETH Zurich’s Research Collection under the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000479158.

Code availability

The R code used and produced in this study is deposited in a permanent open-access online repository at ETH Zurich’s Research Collection at https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000479158.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support has been given by ETH Zurich and the German Research Foundation (DFG, project no. 387472333 to S.D.). We especially thank H. Maclean for language proofreading.

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  1. Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    David Haaf, Johan Six & Sebastian Doetterl

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  1. David Haaf
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Contributions

S.D. designed the research. D.H. conducted the data assembly and statistical analyses. D.H. and S.D. processed the data. D.H., J.S. and D.S. interpreted the data and contributed to the writing of the paper with D.S. being the supervising author.

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Correspondence to Sebastian Doetterl.

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Peer review information Nature Climate Change thanks Ben Bond-Lamberty, Jeroen Meersmans and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Haaf, D., Six, J. & Doetterl, S. Global patterns of geo-ecological controls on the response of soil respiration to warming. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 623–627 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01068-9

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