Declining soil pH reduces microbial biomass-driven soil multifunctionality
Soil acidification due to climate and anthropogenic changes persistently threatens biodiversity and biomass, the essential drivers of ecosystem multifunctionality . However, the influence of a sustained reduction in soil pH on the regulatory role of microbial communities in ecosystem multifunctionality has not yet been assessed. Here, we investigated the critical pH thresholds at which microbial biomass becomes a key determinant of soil multifunctionality (SMF) based on a large-scale paddy field study ( n = 429) and a global dataset ( n = 35,641). We found that when the soil pH was <5, microbial biomass (i.e., bacterial or fungal) was significantly positively correlated with the soil SMF, representing a critical threshold for microbial biomass regulation of ecosystem multifunctionality. We further predicted the global pattern of the microbial drivers of SMF under soil acidification scenarios over the next 50 years. Our results indicate that as soil acidification continues, the global area of biomass-mediated SMF will increase by approximately 14 % by 2070. Our results highlight that due to ongoing acidification, biomass reduction will cause accelerated losses in global SMF.
Authors
- Han Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2918-8329)
- Jizhong Z. Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2014-0564)
- Yunfeng Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8274-6196)
- Zhiyuan Ma (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5694-2214)
- Meitong Jiang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4841-3122)
- Ruilin Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5419-2253)
- Jixian Ding
- Yuting Liang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5443-4486)
- Weigen Huang
Institutions
- Anhui University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Oklahoma City University (US)
- Anhui Science and Technology University (CN)
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Institute of Soil Science (CN)
- University of Oklahoma (US)
- Tsinghua University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Applied Soil Ecology
- Published
- 2024-09-05
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsoil.2024.105623
- Citations
- 16
- Primary Topic
- Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.34
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province
- Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
- National Key Research and Development Program of China
- National Key Research and Development Program of China Stem Cell and Translational Research