As humans, our energy consumption is affected by the weather. In climates where weather changes from hot summers to cold winters, the body needs more energy to maintain the temperature. Weather also affects microbes in the soil, such as bacteria and fungi. Seasonal soil temperature and moisture fluctuations affect soil carbon emissions and nutrient cycles in microbial activities.
As energy, microbes consume carbon. As the amount and activity of microbes increases, they consume more carbon, leading to more carbon emissions, and vice versa.
On 10 May, a modelling study published in Global Change Biology found that this microbial seasonality had a significant impact on global carbon emissions and acts as a fundamental mechanism for the regulation of terrestrial-climate interactions and soil biogeochemistry.
“When the microbial soil colonies are in productive phases, they will need more carbon to boost their growth,” said Xiaofeng Xu, an ecologist and lead author of global change. “When we manipulated the amount of soil microbe and the activity of the simulations and observed reciprocal carbon changes, we found the microbial respiratory rate to be reduced by the removal of seasonal variation.”
Carbon Emissions Could Be Reduced If The Average Microbial Population Remained Constant.
Land stewards might consider reducing soil fluctuation by reducing tillage and other soil carbon management practises, researchers said. It can also help farmers keep the soil fertile.
“We know that the microbes on soil drive carbon flow—carbon exchange between land, the sea and the atmosphere—through the production of carbon flow-inducing enzymes,” Xu said. “With these microbes that have a hand in ultimate carbon control, soil carbon completes its cycle.”
Various microbial soil groups play distinct roles in the carbon cycle.
“The ability of the Model to simulate bacterial and fungal dynamics improves our understanding of the carbon cycle impact of soil microbials,” said Liyuan He, first writer and doctoral student of SDSU.
The findings advance the soil microbial ecology and show the ecological importance of microbial seasonality and our understanding of climate change soil carbon storage.
The author’s individual plot scale was used to observe nine natural biomes, including tropical/subtropical forest, moderate coniferous forest, temperate large-leaf forest, boreal forest, shrubland, grasslands, desert, tundra and wetland.
Then, in view of the global dynamics of land usage change, researchers will explore microbial seasonality and its effect on the global carbon balance.
