Climate and litter C/N ratio constrain soil organic carbon accumulation

• 作者: Deqiang Zhang Gengxu Wang Guirui Yu Guowei Chu Guoyi Zhou Hai Ren Jingyun Fang Junhua Yan Juxiu Liu Keping Ma Philippe Ciais Ping Zhou Qianmei Zhang Shan Xu Sheng Du Shenggong Li Shijie Han Shizhong Liu Stefano Manzoni Wantong Wang Wenjuan Huang Xiankai Lu Xiuzhi Chen Xuli Tang Youxin Ma Yuelin Li
• 来源期刊: 国家科学评论（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2019,（4）
• 页码范围: 746-757
• 页数: 12页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwz045

摘要

Soil organic carbon (SOC) plays critical roles in stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentration, but the mechanistic controls on the amount and distribution of SOC on global scales are not well understood. In turn, this has hampered the ability to model global C budgets and to find measures to mitigate climate change. Here, based on the data from a large field survey campaign with 2600 plots across China's forest ecosystems and a global collection of published data from forested land, we find that a low litter carbon-to-nitrogen ratio (C/N) and high wetness index (P/PET, precipitation-to-potential- evapotranspiration ratio) are the two factors that promote SOC accumulation, with only minor contributions of litter quantity and soil texture. The field survey data demonstrated that high plant diversity decreased litter C/N and thus indirectly promoted SOC accumulation by increasing the litter quality. We conclude that any changes in plant-community composition, plant-species richness and environmental factors that can reduce the litter C/N ratio, or climatic changes that increase wetness index, may promote SOC accumulation. The study provides a guideline for modeling the carbon cycle of various ecosystem scales and formulates the principle for land-based actions for mitigating the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration.