Microbial mediation of biogeochemical cycles revealed by simulation of global changes with soil transplant and cropping.
Despite microbes' key roles in driving biogeochemical cycles, the mechanism of microbe-mediated feedbacks to global changes remains elusive. Recently, soil transplant has been successfully established as a proxy to simulate climate changes, as the current trend of global warming coherently causes range shifts toward higher latitudes. Four years after southward soil transplant over large transects in China, we found that microbial functional diversity was increased, in addition to concurrent changes in microbial biomass, soil nutrient content and functional processes involved in the nitrogen cycle. However, soil transplant effects could be overridden by maize cropping, which was attributed to a negative interaction. Strikingly, abundances of nitrogen and carbon cycle genes were increased by these field experiments simulating global change, coinciding with higher soil nitrification potential and carbon dioxide (CO2) efflux. Further investigation revealed strong correlations between carbon cycle genes and CO2 efflux in bare soil but not cropped soil, and between nitrogen cycle genes and nitrification. These findings suggest that changes of soil carbon and nitrogen cycles by soil transplant and cropping were predictable by measuring microbial functional potentials, contributing to a better mechanistic understanding of these soil functional processes and suggesting a potential to incorporate microbial communities in greenhouse gas emission modeling.
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Mengxin
M
Zhao
Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.
Kai
K
Xue
1] State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China [2] University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Feng
F
Wang
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Shanshan
S
Liu
Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.
Shijie
S
Bai
State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China.
Bo
B
Sun
1] State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China [2] Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA [3] Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Jizhong
J
Zhou
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Yunfeng
Y
Yang
D044822:Biodiversity; D018533:Biomass; D002244:Carbon / Q000032:analysis; D057486:Carbon Cycle / Q000235:genetics; D002245:Carbon Dioxide / Q000378:metabolism; D057231:Climate Change; D064351:Genes, Microbial; D058465:Nitrification; D009584:Nitrogen / Q000032:analysis; D058458:Nitrogen Cycle / Q000235:genetics; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D012988:Soil Microbiology; D003313:Zea mays
D012987:Soil; D002245:Carbon Dioxide; D002244:Carbon; D009584:Nitrogen