Substrate-induced respiration responses to nitrogen and/or phosphorus additions in soils from different climatic and land use conditions

Abstract

The fates of carbon (C) input to soils widely vary under different nutrient availability. In this study, both initial substrate-induced respiration (SIR) rates and substrate-induced growth responses to nitrogen (N) and/or phosphorus (P) additions were investigated together because the two approaches had been assessed separately in previous studies. A wide range of Japanese, Thai and Kazakh soils with different land uses were used, including acidic Japanese forest soils with low N availability, which has not been fully examined. We hypothesized that microbes in Japanese forest soils would mainly respond to N addition. The results showed that N addition decreased initial SIR rates to 75–87% for the acidic Japanese and Thai forest soils probably due to the increases in substrate C use efficiencies, but had no effect for other soils. P addition tended to increase initial SIR rates. In addition, P but not N addition resulted in the increases of specific microbial growth rates for all tested soils. In conclusion, soil microbes responded to P addition with enhanced their growth rates and initial SIR rates, whereas they responded to N addition with reduced initial SIR rates probably through efficient use of C only for the Japanese and Thai forest soils. Therefore, nitrogen availability will have a crucial role in microbial use of substrate C especially for acidic forest soils with low N availability.