title: Positive climate feedbacks of soil microbial communities in a semi-arid grassland.
abstract: Soil microbial communities may be able to rapidly respond to changing environments in ways that change community structure and functioning, which could affect climate-carbon feedbacks. However, detecting microbial feedbacks to elevated CO(2)  (eCO(2) ) or warming is hampered by concurrent changes in substrate availability and plant responses. Whether microbial communities can persistently feed back to climate change is still unknown. We overcame this problem by collecting microbial inocula at subfreezing conditions under eCO(2)  and warming treatments in a semi-arid grassland field experiment. The inoculant was incubated in a sterilised soil medium at constant conditions for 30 days. Microbes from eCO(2)  exhibited an increased ability to decompose soil organic matter (SOM) compared with those from ambient CO(2)  plots, and microbes from warmed plots exhibited increased thermal sensitivity for respiration. Microbes from the combined eCO(2)  and warming plots had consistently enhanced microbial decomposition activity and thermal sensitivity. These persistent positive feedbacks of soil microbial communities to eCO(2)  and warming may therefore stimulate soil C loss.
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany and Program in Ecology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA. mnie@uwyo.edu
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nie
authors.forename: Elise
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pendall
authors.forename: Colin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bell
authors.forename: Caley K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Gasch
authors.forename: Swastika
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Raut
authors.forename: Shanker
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tamang
authors.forename: Matthew D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Wallenstein
mesh_terms: D002244:Carbon; D002980:Climate; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D004798:Enzymes / Q000378:metabolism; D006109:Poaceae; D012621:Seasons; D012988:Soil Microbiology; D014959:Wyoming
chemical_list: D004798:Enzymes; D002244:Carbon