Similar response of labile and resistant soil organic matter pools to changes in temperature

Changming Fang (), Pete Smith, John B. Moncrieff and Jo U. Smith
Additional contact information
Changming Fang: School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen
Pete Smith: School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen
John B. Moncrieff: Ecology and Resource Management, School of GeoSciences, The University of Edinburgh
Jo U. Smith: School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen

Nature, 2005, vol. 433, issue 7021, 57-59

Abstract: Soil carbon: all for one The effect of temperature change on decomposition of soil organic matter is an important factor when considering the effect of global warming on soil-stored carbon. It is commonly assumed that soil carbon exists as two fractions, a ‘labile’ fraction sensitive to temperature variation and a ‘resistant’ fraction insensitive to temperature. This implies that higher losses of carbon would occur from soils in forest and tundra, which have the largest store of labile organic matter, and that the effect of warming on soil organic matter decomposition may decline with time. Not so, according to an experiment on samples of forest soil. The temperature sensitivity of decomposition was not affected by soil organic matter composition, suggesting that all soil organic matter will respond similarly to global warming.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03138 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:433:y:2005:i:7021:d:10.1038_nature03138

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature03138

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().