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The soil microbiome governs the response of microbial respiration to warming across the globe

Nature Climate Change volume 13, pages 1382–1387 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The sensitivity of soil microbial respiration to warming (Q10) remains a major source of uncertainty surrounding the projections of soil carbon emissions to the atmosphere as the factors driving Q10 patterns across ecosystems have been assessed in isolation from each other. Here we report the results of a warming experiment using soils from 332 sites across all continents and major biomes to simultaneously evaluate the main drivers of global Q10 patterns. Compared with biochemical recalcitrance, mineral protection, substrate quantity and environmental factors, the soil microbiome (that is, microbial biomass and bacterial taxa) explained the largest portion of variation in Q10 values. Our work provides solid evidence that soil microbiomes largely govern the responses of soil heterotrophic respiration to warming and thus need to be explicitly accounted for when assessing land carbon–climate feedbacks.

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Fig. 1: Global survey of soils to investigate the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration (Q10).
Fig. 2: Distribution and predictors of temperature sensitivity of soil respiration (Q10).
Fig. 3: Correlations between drivers and temperature sensitivity of soil respiration (Q10) values across ecosystem types.
Fig. 4: Major drivers of the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration (Q10).

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Data availability

The raw data associated with this study are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20776243 (ref. 75).

Code availability

The code associated with this study is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20776243 (ref. 75).

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Acknowledgements

T.S.-S. and A.G. were supported by FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades-Agencia Estatal de Investigación/Proyect (CGL2017-88124-R). M.D.-B. was supported by the BES grant agreement number LRB17\1019 (MUSGONET), innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement 702057 (CLIMIFUN), Ramón y Cajal grant (RYC2018-025483-I), a project from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-115813RA-I00; SOIL4GROWTH) and a project PAIDI 2020 from the Junta de Andalucía (P20_00879). F.T.M. is supported by the European Research Council grant 647038 (BIODESERT), Generalitat Valenciana grant CIDEGENT/2018/041, by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant PID2020-116578RB-I00) and by the contract between ETH Zurich and University of Alicante ‘Mapping terrestrial ecosystem structure at the global scale’. E.G. acknowledges funding from Generalitat Valenciana and Europen Social Fund grant (APOSTD/2021/188). T.S.-S., A.G. and M.D.-B. were also supported by TED2021-130908B-C41 (URBANCHANGE). N.E. gratefully acknowledges the support of iDiv, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG – FZT 118, 202548816), as well as by the DFG (Ei 862/29-1; Ei 862/31-1). C.C.-D. is supported by a Post-doc Research Scholarship in the context of the FCT funded project SoilRecon with reference BIPD_01_2021_FCT-PTDC/BIA-CBI/2340/ 2020 and acknowledges the Center for Research and Development in Agrifood Systems and Sustainability (CISAS) with references UIDB/05937/2020 and UIDP/05937/2020, also funded by FCT national funds. We thank the researchers originally involved in the BIODESERT, CLIMIFUN and MUSGONET projects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Sistemas Físicos, Químicos y Naturales, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain

    Tadeo Sáez-Sandino & Antonio Gallardo

  2. Instituto de Ciencias Agrarias, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, Spain

    Pablo García-Palacios & César Plaza

  3. Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Pablo García-Palacios

  4. Instituto Multidisciplinar para el Estudio del Medio “Ramon Margalef”, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain

    Fernando T. Maestre & Emilio Guirado

  5. Departamento de Ecología, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain

    Fernando T. Maestre

  6. Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia

    Brajesh K. Singh & Juntao Wang

  7. Global Centre for Land-Based Innovation, Western Sydney University, Penrith South DC, New South Wales, Australia

    Brajesh K. Singh & Juntao Wang

  8. CISAS - Center for Research and Development in Agrifood Systems and Sustainability, Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Rua Escola Industrial e Comercial Nun’Álvares, Viana do Castelo, Portugal

    Concha Cano-Díaz

  9. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle–Jena–Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Nico Eisenhauer

  10. Institute of Biology, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany

    Nico Eisenhauer

  11. Laboratorio de Biodiversidad y Funcionamiento Ecosistémico. Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla (IRNAS), CSIC, Seville, Spain

    Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo

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  1. Tadeo Sáez-Sandino
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  2. Pablo García-Palacios
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  10. Antonio Gallardo
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  11. Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo
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Contributions

T.S.-S., P.G.-P. and M.D.-B. conceptualized the project. M.D.-B., F.T.M. and A.G. acquired funding. T.S.-S., M.D.-B., P.G.-P., F.T.M., C.P., E.G., B.K.S., J.W., C.C.-D., N.E. and A.G. conducted the investigation. T.S.-S. wrote the paper with all authors contributing to the drafts.

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Correspondence to Tadeo Sáez-Sandino or Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo.

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Sáez-Sandino, T., García-Palacios, P., Maestre, F.T. et al. The soil microbiome governs the response of microbial respiration to warming across the globe. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 1382–1387 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01868-1

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