Climate warming reduces soil gaseous nitrogen losses in a temperate forest

Global warming is projected to accelerate ecosystem nitrogen (N) loss via gaseous pathways, thereby decreasing N availability, a critical nutrient for primary productivity and carbon sequestration. However, the models forecasting this ecosystem N loss are based on laboratory experiments that are inherently uncertain and have had few in situ validations. Over 6 y, we measured ~200,000 soil nitric oxide (NO; an air pollutant) and nitrous oxide (N<sub>2</sub>O; a powerful greenhouse gas) fluxes and used an upscaling approach to estimate N<sub>2</sub> fluxes after warming a temperate forest by 2 °C. Against thermodynamic theoretical predictions, warming unequivocally lowered emissions of NO by 19% and of N<sub>2</sub>O by 16%. These lower gaseous N losses were not explained by complete reduction of NO and N<sub>2</sub>O to N<sub>2</sub>, leaching, nor plant uptake, but rather by the warming-induced drying of soils that constrained microbial activity, consistent with other warming experiments where precipitation was less than 1,000 mm y<sup>-1</sup>. Our findings challenge ecosystem model assumptions where warming, alone, accelerates N emissions and underscores how warming-induced losses in soil moisture and shortened freeze-thaw periods can offset temperature effects. Our data underscore the need for explicit consideration of in situ soil moisture when predicting changes on the terrestrial N cycle as the planet warms.

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Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Published
2025-11-24
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2513401122
Primary Topic
Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Climate warming reduces soil gaseous nitrogen losses in a temperate forest

Shushi Peng, Peter M. Homyak, Erik A. Hobbie, Yunting Fang et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
article

Climate warming reduces soil gaseous nitrogen losses in a temperate forest

Shushi Peng, Peter M. Homyak, Erik A. Hobbie, Yunting Fang, Shuijin Hu, Yuqi Liu, Per Gundersen, Yihang Duan, Xiaotang Ju, Ronghua Kang, Oliver Lawrence Phillips, Geshere Abdisa Gurmesa, Peter Dörsch, Di Wu, Haoming Yu, Junjie Xu, Weixing Zhu, Dongwei Liu, Chao Wang, Kai Huang, Lingrui Qu, Xiao-Ming Fang, Klaus Butterbach‐Bahl
article en

Abstract

Global warming is projected to accelerate ecosystem nitrogen (N) loss via gaseous pathways, thereby decreasing N availability, a critical nutrient for primary productivity and carbon sequestration. However, the models forecasting this ecosystem N loss are based on laboratory experiments that are inherently uncertain and have had few in situ validations. Over 6 y, we measured ~200,000 soil nitric oxide (NO; an air pollutant) and nitrous oxide (N<sub>2</sub>O; a powerful greenhouse gas) fluxes and used an upscaling approach to estimate N<sub>2</sub> fluxes after warming a temperate forest by 2 °C. Against thermodynamic theoretical predictions, warming unequivocally lowered emissions of NO by 19% and of N<sub>2</sub>O by 16%. These lower gaseous N losses were not explained by complete reduction of NO and N<sub>2</sub>O to N<sub>2</sub>, leaching, nor plant uptake, but rather by the warming-induced drying of soils that constrained microbial activity, consistent with other warming experiments where precipitation was less than 1,000 mm y<sup>-1</sup>. Our findings challenge ecosystem model assumptions where warming, alone, accelerates N emissions and underscores how warming-induced losses in soil moisture and shortened freeze-thaw periods can offset temperature effects. Our data underscore the need for explicit consideration of in situ soil moisture when predicting changes on the terrestrial N cycle as the planet warms.

Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesVol. 122(48)
University of California, Riverside (US), King University (US), Binghamton University (US), University of Copenhagen (DK), Landscape Institute (GB), University of Leeds (GB), North Carolina State University (US), University of New Hampshire (US), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Peking University (CN), Aarhus University (DK), Hainan University (CN), University of Michigan (US), Institute of Applied Ecology (CN), Forest Research (GB), International Isotopes (United States) (US), Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (US), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NO)
CERN, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Department of Science and Technology of Liaoning Province, National Key Research and Development Program of China, Youth Innovation Promotion Association
Openalex Percentile: Top 56%
Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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