MICROBIAL ECOLOGY
ASSIGNMENT
TOPIC: INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
ON MICROBIAL CARBON CYCLING IN
TERRESRIAL ECOSYSTEMS
SUBMITTED BY: ARYA PS (REG NO: 23371011)
SUBMITTED TO: Dr. MATHIMARAN NATARAJAN
INTRODUCTION
Global climate change, caused by human-induced greenhouse gas increases, is a
significant scientific and political challenge. Understanding the biological
mechanisms regulating carbon exchanges between land, oceans, and atmosphere
is crucial for addressing climate-ecosystem feedbacks. Terrestrial ecosystems,
which release and absorb greenhouse gases, act as significant global carbon
sinks. Factors affecting their activity include natural and anthropogenic
disturbances, agricultural land use, nitrogen enrichment, sulphur deposition, and
changes in atmospheric ozone concentration. The influence of climate change
on soil carbon sink remains uncertain, as warming could increase carbon
dioxide liberation from soil to the atmosphere due to enhanced microbial
breakdown. The net effect of climate change on ecosystem carbon budgets
depends on the balance between photosynthesis and respiration. Understanding
soil respiration and its sensitivity to climate change is essential, as soil microbes
are crucial determinants of plant community diversity and productivity.
CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON THE
SOIL MICROBIOME
Climate change can significantly alter soil microbial community and functional
profiles, impacting carbon and nitrogen cycling. This can affect climate change
through positive or negative feedbacks. Understanding soil microorganism
responses to climate change will improve climate models. Recent studies
incorporate multiple factors in combination, specifically reviewing soil
microbiome responses to soil warming and eCO2. Climate change has both
direct and indirect effects on soil microbes, which contribute to global warming.
Direct effects involve temperature, precipitation, and extreme weather changes,
while indirect effects result from climate-driven changes in plant productivity
and diversity, altering soil physicochemical conditions, carbon supply, and
microbial community structure. This study uses both direct and indirect effects
to illustrate the role of soil microbes and microbial metabolism in carbon cycle
feedbacks and their consequences for climate change.
DIRECT EFFECTS
Soil microbes play a crucial role in soil organic matter decomposition, and
global warming is believed to accelerate rates of heterotrophic microbial
activity, increasing CO2 emissions and dissolved organic carbon exports.
Temperature is thought to be more sensitive to soil respiration than primary
production, making it predicted that climate warming will increase the net
carbon transfer from soil to the atmosphere, creating a positive feedback on
climate change. However, the relationship between temperature and
heterotrophic microbial respiration and its potential feedback to climate change
remains unclear due to the complexity and diversity of soil organic matter and
the likelihood that the temperature dependence of microbial decomposition of
soil carbon compounds will vary. For example, litter decomposition's
temperature sensitivity increases as the quality of organic carbon consumed by
microbes declines, consistent with kinetic theory suggesting greater temperature
sensitivity for decomposition of recalcitrant carbon pools. However, there is still
much uncertainty on this subject, with some studies suggesting similar or less
temperature sensitivity for more recalcitrant substrates, while others suggest that
temperature sensitivity of more resistant organic matter is greater than that of
labile substrates.
Additionally, uncertainty about the reactiveness of different microbial groups
and species to temperature change and whether short-term increases in carbon
mineralization will be sustained due to depletion of substrate availability and
acclimation of soil microbial communities to higher temperatures further
complicates the picture. This microbial process level uncertainty extends to
unreliable model predictions of soil carbon feedbacks to climate change,
representing a major research challenge for the future.
The response to rewetting is less pronounced in soils frequently exposed to
natural drying and rewetting cycles. However, increased drought and drying in
wetlands and peatlands create more favorable conditions for microbial activity
by lowering the water table and introducing oxygen into previously anaerobic
soil. This has been shown to increase the activity of phenol oxidases, which
play a pivotal role in the breakdown of complex organic matter and the cycling
of phenolic compounds that may interfere with extra-cellular enzymes.
The enhanced breakdown of recalcitrant organic matter under drying could have
major implications for the global carbon cycle. While the increase in O2
availability accompanies drought promotes organic matter decomposition in
wetlands and peatlands, opposing effects occur for methanogenic pathways, as
methane emissions are reduced. Water table depth is a strong predictor of
methane emissions, and methanogens are more sensitive to desiccation.
Additionally, toxic effects on methanogens of oxidized products of
denitrification have been noted, while net methane emissions are suppressed
under drought conditions by the action of methanotrophic bacteria.
Drought also has marked effects on nitrous oxide (N2O) emission from soils, a
potent greenhouse gas that is increasing in atmospheric concentrations at a rate
of 0.2-0.3% per year. Climate change-related reductions in snow cover will also
be of high importance, as 25% of Earth's permafrost could thaw by 2100 due to
climate warming, releasing considerable amounts of otherwise protected
organic matter for microbial decomposition. Predicted reductions in snow cover
in alpine and arctic regions will increase soil freezing, with consequences for
root mortality, nutrient cycling, and microbial processes of decomposition.
Strong microbial responses to freeze-thaw have been detected in several studies,
including increased microbial activity and greenhouse gas emission, altered
microbial substrate use, and the expression of denitrifying genes, leading to the
release of N2O gas.
A recent study found that freeze-thaw events may cause nitrogen and carbon
losses in soils, but they have little effect or reduce them compared to unfrozen
conditions. Additionally, reduced snow cover can suppress soil respiration due
to a temperature-sensitive soil microbial community beneath snow, potentially
impacting winter soil microbial activity, carbon storage, and CO2 efflux in
alpine and arctic regions.
INDIRECT EFFECTS
Climate change can indirectly affect soil microbial communities and their
activity through its influence on plant growth and vegetation composition.
These indirect effects can be separated into two mechanisms. The first
mechanism involves the indirect effects of rising atmospheric concentrations of
carbon dioxide on soil microbes, which increase plant photosynthesis and
transfer of photosynthate carbon to fine roots and mycorrhizal fungi and
heterotrophic microbes. This increases the flux of carbon to roots, their
symbionts, and heterotrophic microbes through root exudation of easily
degradable sugars, organic acids, and amino acids. The consequences of
increased carbon flux from roots to soil for microbial communities and carbon
exchange are difficult to predict due to factors such as plant identity, soil food
web interactions, soil fertility, and other ecosystem properties. Potential
outcomes include increased soil carbon loss by respiration and in drainage
waters as dissolved organic carbon due to stimulation of microbial abundance
and activity, stimulation of microbial biomass and immobilization of soil
nitrogen, increased plant-microbial competition for nitrogen, increased growth
of mycorrhizal fungi, and changes in root exudation. The mechanisms involved
in these indirect effects are poorly understood. The second mechanism involves
shifts in the functional composition and diversity of vegetation, which occur
over longer timescales of decades to centuries.
Climate-driven changes in vegetation composition influence microbes and their
metabolism, leading to carbon cycle feedback. Changes in plant litter quality,
which differs across plant functional groups, correlate with decomposition rates
and heterotrophic respiration. Slow-growing plants produce poor litter with low
nutrients and recalcitrant compounds, while fast-growing plants produce high-
quality litter with nutrients and rapid decomposition. Climate-driven increases
in evergreen shrub dominance could negatively impact carbon exchange and
global warming due to reduced heterotrophic respiration. Conversely, increased
dominance of legumes over grasses could induce a positive feedback on
microbial activity and carbon mineralization due to enhanced soil nutrient
availability and decomposition of nutrient-rich litter. These ecosystem-level
shifts in substrate quality could affect the temperature sensitivity of
decomposition and complicate predicting the magnitude of carbon cycle
feedbacks. Changes in vegetation composition alter nutrient competition
between plant species and soil microbes, potentially affecting ecosystem
nutrient cycling and soil carbon exchange. Understanding the importance of
these feedbacks between climate change, vegetation, and soil microbial
functioning is a significant research challenge.
CONCLUSION
Soil microbial ecology is crucial for assessing terrestrial carbon cycle-climate
feedbacks. However, the complexity of the soil microbial community and the
various ways climate and global changes affect soil microbes make it difficult to
draw definitive conclusions. However, progress can be made by considering
both direct and indirect impacts of climate change on microorganisms and their
potential to amplify or dampen carbon cycle feedbacks. This can be achieved
through long-term multifactor field experiments in relevant biomes, which
consider both direct and indirect impacts of climate change on soil microbes and
their contribution to land-atmosphere carbon exchange. A collaborative
approach is needed to link microbial ecology to whole ecosystem scale flux
measures and carbon cycle feedback modeling.
REFERENCES
• Bardgett, R., Freeman, C. & Ostle, N. Microbial contributions to climate
change through carbon cycle feedbacks. ISME J 2, 805–814 (2008).
• Dan Naylor, Natalie Sadler, Arunima Bhattacharjee, Emily B. Graham,
Christopher R. Anderton, Ryan McClure, Mary Lipton, Kirsten S.
Hofmockel, Janet K. Jansson . Soil Microbiomes Under Climate Change
and Implications for Carbon Cycling. Annual Review of Environment
and Resources 2020 45:1, 29-59.
