A global experiment suggests climate warming will not accelerate litter decomposition in streams but might reduce carbon sequestration
Luz Boyero,Richard G. Pearson,Mark O. Gessner,Mark O. Gessner,Leon A. Barmuta,Verónica Ferreira,Manuel A. S. Graça,David Dudgeon,Andrew J. Boulton,Marcos Callisto,Eric Chauvet,Eric Chauvet,Julie E. Helson,Andreas Bruder,Andreas Bruder,Ricardo J. Albariño,Catherine M. Yule,Muthukumarasamy Arunachalam,Judy N. Davies,Ricardo Figueroa,Alexander S. Flecker,Alonso Ramírez,Russell G. Death,Tomoya Iwata,Jude M. Mathooko,Catherine Mathuriau,José F. Gonçalves,Marcelo S. Moretti,Tajang Jinggut,Sylvain Lamothe,Sylvain Lamothe,Charles M'Erimba,Lavenia Ratnarajah,Markus Schindler,José Castela,Leonardo Buria,Aydeé Cornejo,Aydeé Cornejo,Verónica Díaz Villanueva,Derek C. West +39 more
TLDR
It is found that climate warming will likely hasten microbial litter decomposition and produce an equivalent decline in detritivore-mediated decomposition rates, which implies consequences for global biogeochemistry and a possible positive climate feedback.Abstract:
The decomposition of plant litter is one of the most important ecosystem processes in the biosphere and is particularly sensitive to climate warming. Aquatic ecosystems are well suited to studying warming effects on decomposition because the otherwise confounding influence of moisture is constant. By using a latitudinal temperature gradient in an unprecedented global experiment in streams, we found that climate warming will likely hasten microbial litter decomposition and produce an equivalent decline in detritivore-mediated decomposition rates. As a result, overall decomposition rates should remain unchanged. Nevertheless, the process would be profoundly altered, because the shift in importance from detritivores to microbes in warm climates would likely increase CO2 production and decrease the generation and sequestration of recalcitrant organic particles. In view of recent estimates showing that inland waters are a significant component of the global carbon cycle, this implies consequences for global biogeochemistry and a possible positive climate feedback.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal Article
Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.
Stefano Schiavon,Roberto Zecchin +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a document, redatto, voted and pubblicato by the Ipcc -Comitato intergovernativo sui cambiamenti climatici - illustra la sintesi delle ricerche svolte su questo tema rilevante.
Journal ArticleDOI
Riparian plant litter quality increases with latitude
Luz Boyero,Manuel A. S. Graça,Alan M. Tonin,Javier Pérez,Andrew J. M. Swafford,Verónica Ferreira,Andrea Landeira-Dabarca,Andrea Landeira-Dabarca,Markos A. Alexandrou,Mark O. Gessner,Mark O. Gessner,Brendan G. McKie,Ricardo J. Albariño,Leon A. Barmuta,Marcos Callisto,Julián Chará,Eric Chauvet,Checo Colón-Gaud,David Dudgeon,Andrea C. Encalada,Andrea C. Encalada,Ricardo Figueroa,Alexander S. Flecker,Tadeusz Fleituch,André Frainer,André Frainer,José F. Gonçalves,Julie E. Helson,Tomoya Iwata,Jude M. Mathooko,Charles M'Erimba,Catherine M. Pringle,Alonso Ramírez,Christopher M. Swan,Catherine M. Yule,Richard G. Pearson +35 more
TL;DR: It is hypothesized that litter quality would increase with latitude (despite variation within regions) and traits would be correlated to produce ‘syndromes’ resulting from phylogeny and environmental variation, and it is found lower litter quality and higher nitrogen:phosphorus ratios in the tropics.
Journal ArticleDOI
Continental-scale effects of nutrient pollution on stream ecosystem functioning.
Guy Woodward,Guy Woodward,Mark O. Gessner,Paul S. Giller,Vladislav Gulis,Sally Hladyz,Antoine Lecerf,Antoine Lecerf,Björn Malmqvist,Brendan G. McKie,Scott D. Tiegs,Scott D. Tiegs,Scott D. Tiegs,Helen Cariss,Michael Dobson,Arturo Elosegi,Verónica Ferreira,Manuel A. S. Graça,Tadeusz Fleituch,Jean O. Lacoursière,Marius Nistorescu,Jesús Pozo,Geta Rîşnoveanu,Markus Schindler,Markus Schindler,Angheluta Vadineanu,Lena B. M. Vought,Eric Chauvet,Eric Chauvet +28 more
TL;DR: Dramatically slowed breakdown at both extremes of the gradient indicated strong nutrient limitation in unaffected systems, potential for strong stimulation in moderately altered systems, and inhibition in highly polluted streams, emphasizing the need to complement established structural approaches with functional measures for assessing ecosystem health.
Journal ArticleDOI
A framework for benchmarking land models
Yiqi Luo,James T. Randerson,Gab Abramowitz,Cédric Bacour,Eleanor Blyth,Nuno Carvalhais,Philippe Ciais,Daniela Dalmonech,Joshua B. Fisher,Rosie A. Fisher,Pierre Friedlingstein,Kathleen A. Hibbard,Forrest M. Hoffman,Deborah N. Huntzinger,C. D. Jones,Charles D. Koven,David M. Lawrence,Dejun Li,Miguel D. Mahecha,Shuli Niu,Richard J. Norby,S. L. Piao,Xuan Qi,Philippe Peylin,Iain Colin Prentice,William J. Riley,Markus Reichstein,Christopher R. Schwalm,Ying-Ping Wang,Jianyang Xia,Sönke Zaehle,Xuhui Zhou +31 more
TL;DR: This paper poses a benchmarking framework for evaluation of land model performances and highlights major challenges at this infant stage of benchmark analysis.
Journal ArticleDOI
Stream microbial diversity in response to environmental changes: review and synthesis of existing research
TL;DR: The common observation of connections between ecosystem process drivers and microbial diversity suggests that microbial taxonomic turnover could mediate ecosystem-scale responses to changing environmental conditions, including both microbial habitat distribution and physicochemical factors.
References
More filters
Book
Mixed Effects Models and Extensions in Ecology with R
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors apply additive mixed modelling on phyoplankton time series data and show that the additive model can be used to estimate the age distribution of small cetaceans.
Book
Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-PLUS
TL;DR: Linear Mixed-Effects and Nonlinear Mixed-effects (NLME) models have been studied in the literature as mentioned in this paper, where the structure of grouped data has been used for fitting LME models.
Journal ArticleDOI
A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems
Camille Parmesan,Gary W. Yohe +1 more
TL;DR: A diagnostic fingerprint of temporal and spatial ‘sign-switching’ responses uniquely predicted by twentieth century climate trends is defined and generates ‘very high confidence’ (as laid down by the IPCC) that climate change is already affecting living systems.
Journal ArticleDOI
Toward a metabolic theory of ecology
James H. Brown,James H. Brown,James F. Gillooly,Andrew P. Allen,Van M. Savage,Van M. Savage,Geoffrey B. West,Geoffrey B. West +7 more
TL;DR: This work has developed a quantitative theory for how metabolic rate varies with body size and temperature, and predicts how metabolic theory predicts how this rate controls ecological processes at all levels of organization from individuals to the biosphere.
Journal ArticleDOI
Temperature sensitivity of soil carbon decomposition and feedbacks to climate change
TL;DR: This work has suggested that several environmental constraints obscure the intrinsic temperature sensitivity of substrate decomposition, causing lower observed ‘apparent’ temperature sensitivity, and these constraints may, themselves, be sensitive to climate.