Nitrogen availability regulates deep soil priming effect by changing microbial metabolic efficiency in a subtropical forest

Abstract

In terrestrial ecosystems, deep soils (below 30 cm) are major organic carbon (C) pools. The labile carbon input could alter soil organic carbon (SOC) mineralization, resulting in priming effect (PE), which could be modified by nitrogen (N) availability, however, the underlying mechanism is unclear for deep soils, which complicates the prediction of deep soil C cycling in response to N deposition. A series of N applications with 13C labeled glucose was set to investigate the effect of labile C and N on deep SOC mineralization. Microbial biomass, functional community, metabolic efficiency and enzyme activities were examined for their effects on SOC mineralization and PE. During incubation, glucose addition promoted SOC mineralization, resulting in positive PE. The magnitude of PE decreased significantly with increasing N. The N-regulated PE was not dependent on extracellular enzyme activities but was positively correlated with carbon use efficiency and negatively with metabolic quotient. Higher N levels resulted in higher microbial biomass and SOC-derived microbial biomass than lower N levels. These results suggest that the decline in the PE under high N availability was mainly controlled by higher microbial metabolic efficiency which allocated more C for growth. Structural equation modelling also revealed that microbial metabolic efficiency rather than enzyme activities was the main factor regulating the PE. The negative effect of additional N suggests that future N deposition could promote soil C sequestration.