The Environmental Microbiome In A Changing World: Microbial Processes And Biogeochemistry

Climate change can alter ecosystem processes and organismal phenology through both long-term, gradual changes and alteration of disturbance regimes. Because microbes mediate decomposition, and therefore the initial stages of nutrient cycling, soil biogeochemical responses to climate change will be driven by microbial responses to changes in temperature, precipitation, and pulsed climatic events. Improving projections of soil ecological and biogeochemical responses to climate change effects therefore requires greater knowledge of microbial contributions to decomposition. This dissertation examines soil microbial and biogeochemical responses to the long-term and punctuated effects of climate change, as well as improvement to decomposition models following addition of microbial parameters. First, through a climate change mesocosm experiment on two soils, I determined that biogeochemical losses due to warming and snow reduction vary across soil types. Additionally, the length of time with soil microbial activity during plant dormancy increased under warming, and in some cases decreased following snow reduction. Asynchrony length was positively related to carbon and nitrogen loss. Next, I examined soil enzyme activity, carbon and nitrogen biodegradability, and fungal abundance in response to ice storms, an extreme event projected to occur more frequently under climate change in the northeastern United States. Enzyme activity response to ice storm treatments varied by both target nutrient and, for nitrogen, soil horizon. Soil horizons often experienced opposite response of enzyme activity to ice storm treatments, and increasing ice storm frequency also altered the direction of the microbial response. Mid-levels of ice storm treatment additionally increased fungal hyphal abundance. Finally, I added explicit microbial parameters to a global decomposition model that previously incorporated climate and litter quality. The best mass loss model simply added microbial flows between litter quality pools, and addition of a microbial biomass and products pool also improved model performance compared to the traditional implicit microbial model. Collectively, these results illustrate the importance of soil characteristics to the biogeochemical and microbial response to both gradual climate change effects and extreme events. Furthermore, they show that large-scale decomposition models can be improved by adding microbial parameters. This information is relevant to the effects of climate change and microbial activity on biogeochemical cycles

Seasonal fluxes of carbonyl sulfide in a midlatitude forest

Carbonyl sulfide (OCS), the most abundant sulfur gas in the atmosphere, has a summer minimum associated with uptake by vegetation and soils, closely correlated with CO2. We report the first direct measurements to our knowledge of the ecosystem flux of OCS throughout an annual cycle, at a mixed temperate forest. The forest took up OCS during most of the growing season with an overall uptake of 1.36 ± 0.01 mol OCS per ha (43.5 ± 0.5 g S per ha, 95% confidence intervals) for the year. Daytime fluxes accounted for 72% of total uptake. Both soils and incompletely closed stomata in the canopy contributed to nighttime fluxes. Unexpected net OCS emission occurred during the warmest weeks in summer. Many requirements necessary to use fluxes of OCS as a simple estimate of photosynthesis were not met because OCS fluxes did not have a constant relationship with photosynthesis throughout an entire day or over the entire year. However, OCS fluxes provide a direct measure of ecosystem-scale stomatal conductance and mesophyll function, without relying on measures of soil evaporation or leaf temperature, and reveal previously unseen heterogeneity of forest canopy processes. Observations of OCS flux provide powerful, independent means to test and refine land surface and carbon cycle models at the ecosystem scale.Engineering and Applied Science

Ecosystem warming increases sap flow rates of northern red oak trees

Over the next century, air temperature increases up to 5 °C are projected for the northeastern USA. Because evapotranspiration strongly influences water loss from terrestrial ecosystems, the ecophysiological response of trees to warming will have important consequences for forest water budgets. We measured growing season sap flow rates in mature northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.) trees in a combined air (up to 5.5 °C above ambient) and soil (up to 1.85 °C above ambient at 6-cm depth) warming experiment at Harvard Forest, MA, USA. Through principal components analysis we found air and soil temperatures had the largest effects on rates of sap flow with relative humidity, photosynthetically active radiation and vapor pressure deficit having significant, but smaller, effects. On average, each 1 °C increase in temperature increased sap flow rates by approximately 1100 kg H2O m-2 sapwood area day-1 throughout the growing season and by 1200 kg H2O m-2 sapwood area day-1 during the early growing season. Reductions in the number of cold winter days correlated positively with increased sap flow during the early growing season (a decrease of 100 heating-degree-days was associated with a sapflow increase of approximately 5 kg H2O m-2 sapwood area day-1). Soil moisture declined with increased treatment temperatures, and each soil moisture percentage decrease resulted in a decrease in sap flow of approximately 360 kg H2O m-2 sapwood area day-1. At night, soil moisture correlated positively with sap flow. These results demonstrate that warmer air and soil temperatures in winter and throughout the growing season lead to increased sap flow rates, which could affect forest water budgets throughout the yearOrganismic and Evolutionary Biolog

Climate Change Across Seasons Experiment (CCASE): A new method for simulating future climate in seasonally snow-covered ecosystems - Fig 2

<p><b>Soil temperatures from a) December 2013 to December 2014 and b) December 2014 to December 2015.</b> Soil temperatures averaged by treatment for 10 cm depth thermistors for each day.</p

Soil temperatures averaged by treatment for each depth (5, 10, and 30 cm) during one freeze-thaw cycle in winter 2015 in the <i>reference</i> (left), <i>warmed</i> (center), and <i>warmed + FTC</i> treatment (right).

<p>We used soil temperatures at 10 cm depth (thickest line) to operationally define one soil FTC. Note that while the temperatures at 5 cm depth are higher than 10 cm depth in the <i>reference</i> plots, they are not significantly different from each other.</p

Diagram of reference and heated plots, including wiring and conduit systems.

<p>Each plot is 11 X 13.5 m². Plots 1 and 2 are <i>reference</i>, 3 and 4 are <i>warmed</i>, and 5 and 6 are <i>warmed +FTC</i>. EPDM synthetic rubber roofing membrane material was installed to 30 cm depth between the two types of warmed plots (i.e., between plots 3–4 and 5–6) to inhibit roots from growing into different treatments. The parallel gray lines inside plots represent heating cable and the black lines outside plots represent heating cable conduit. The junction boxes, located along the conduit, are represented by white boxes. The equipment shed (center box) houses the control equipment for the experiment.</p

Total basal area of trees in each of the six CCASE plots.

<p>Values are totals per tree species within each plot measured in June 2012. Units are cm². There were no statistically significant differences in total basal area of individual tree species comparing reference (plots 1 and 2) to treatment (plots 3–6) plots (<i>P</i> > 0.05 for all tree species; see below) or for total basal area across all tree species comparing reference to treatment plots (<i>P</i> = 0.91).</p

Mean snow (>0 cm, circles) and frost depth (<0 cm, squares) in <i>reference</i>, <i>warmed</i>, and <i>warmed + FTC</i> plots.

<p>Error bars are standard error of the mean. Upper figure contains data from the 2013/2014 winter and lower figure contains data from the 2014/2015 winter.</p