Five years of whole-soil warming led to loss of subsoil carbon stocks and increased CO2 efflux

Jennifer L Soong; Cristina Castanha; Caitlin E Hicks Pries; Nicholas Ofiti; Rachel C Porras; William J Riley; Michael W I Schmidt; Margaret S Torn

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abd1343

Five years of whole-soil warming led to loss of subsoil carbon stocks and increased CO₂ efflux

Sci Adv. 2021 May 21;7(21):eabd1343. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abd1343. Print 2021 May.

Authors

Jennifer L Soong¹, Cristina Castanha², Caitlin E Hicks Pries³, Nicholas Ofiti⁴, Rachel C Porras², William J Riley², Michael W I Schmidt⁴, Margaret S Torn^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Climate Sciences Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. jennifer.soong@colostate.edu mstorn@lbl.gov.
² Climate Sciences Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
³ Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
⁴ Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich 8057, Switzerland.
⁵ Energy Resources Group, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

Abstract

Subsoils below 20 cm are an important reservoir in the global carbon cycle, but little is known about their vulnerability under climate change. We measured a statistically significant loss of subsoil carbon (-33 ± 11%) in warmed plots of a conifer forest after 4.5 years of whole-soil warming (4°C). The loss of subsoil carbon was primarily from unprotected particulate organic matter. Warming also stimulated a sustained 30 ± 4% increase in soil CO₂ efflux due to increased CO₂ production through the whole-soil profile. The observed in situ decline in subsoil carbon stocks with warming is now definitive evidence of a positive soil carbon-climate feedback, which could not be concluded based on increases in CO₂ effluxes alone. The high sensitivity of subsoil carbon and the different responses of soil organic matter pools suggest that models must represent these heterogeneous soil dynamics to accurately predict future feedbacks to warming.

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