Abstract
The legacy effects of previous land use and climate history may affect current soil function. However, the manner in which these legacy effects of land use are modulated by the subsequent climate remains unclear. For this reason, we investigated how the legacies of soil multiple functions left by conversion of grassland to agricultural management were mediated by climate warming with a reciprocal transplant approach. The overall legacy was further separated into the contributions by changes in the abiotic properties of the soil (abiotic process) and microbial community (biotic process). We here hypothesized that warming may mediate the legacy effects of previous land use, mainly by changing biotic processes. Results indicated that warming significantly influenced the total legacies of soil respiration and three exoenzyme activities representing recalcitrant carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling, but did not affect the total legacy of β-1,4-glucosidase activity, which is involved in labile carbon cycling. The relative contributions of abiotic and biotic processes to the warming effects on the total legacy depended on the type of soil function. The effects of warming on land use change legacies were derived from altered bacterial community structure. The results of the present study suggest that climate conditions could interact with land use legacy to determine the ecosystem functions in a process-specific way.
Highlights
Multifunction implemented by soil microbiome is essential to support the ecosystem services relevant to humanity, such as nutrients transformation, water cleaning, carbon sequestration[1,2]
The potential legacy effects of multiple soil processes induced by agricultural management at two temperatures (15 and 25 °C) were explored with the reciprocal transplant approach in a hilly red soil of southern China, where the soil is subject to severe erosion[20]
We found that agricultural management with conventional fertilization left a strong legacy in soil multifunction in this soil (Figs 1 and 2), which is consistent with the detection of land use and climate change legacy targeting to single soil function[7,10,21]
Summary
Multifunction implemented by soil microbiome is essential to support the ecosystem services relevant to humanity, such as nutrients transformation, water cleaning, carbon sequestration[1,2]. Results showed that soil microbes from the home range (Europe) of the invasive exotic plant Centaurea maculosa L. have stronger inhibitory effects on its growth than soil microbes from where the weed has invaded in North America[16] These studies tended to investigate the overall legacy effect rather than examining abiotic and biotic components separately[6,11,17]. We hypothesized that temperature mediates the legacy effects of previous land use majorly by changing biotic processes Toward this end, the potential legacy effects of multiple soil processes induced by agricultural management at two temperatures (15 and 25 °C) were explored with the reciprocal transplant approach in a hilly red soil of southern China, where the soil is subject to severe erosion[20]. The contributions of abiotic and biotic processes to the overall legacy effects were assessed, and soil microbial communities were investigated with next-generation sequencing
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