Ecosystem responses to elevated CO₂ governed by plant-soil interactions and the cost of nitrogen acquisition

Contents Summary 507 I. Introduction 507 II. The return on investment approach 508 III. CO₂ response spectrum 510 IV. Discussion 516 Acknowledgements 518 References 518 SUMMARY: Land ecosystems sequester on average about a quarter of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. It has been proposed that nitrogen (N...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Terrer, César|||0000-0002-5479-3486, Vicca, Sara|||0000-0001-9812-5837, Stocker, Benjamin|||0000-0003-2697-9096, Hungate, Bruce A|||0000-0002-7337-1887, Phillips, Richard P.|||0000-0002-1345-4138, Reich, P. B., Finzi, Adrien C., Prentice, Iain Colin|||0000-0002-1296-6764
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:185596
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/185596
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1111/nph.14872
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:CO₂
Free-Air CO₂ enrichment (FACE)
N₂-fixation
Mycorrhizas
Nitrogen
Photosynthesis
Soil carbon
Soil organic matter (SOM)
Descripción
Sumario:Contents Summary 507 I. Introduction 507 II. The return on investment approach 508 III. CO₂ response spectrum 510 IV. Discussion 516 Acknowledgements 518 References 518 SUMMARY: Land ecosystems sequester on average about a quarter of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. It has been proposed that nitrogen (N) availability will exert an increasingly limiting effect on plants' ability to store additional carbon (C) under rising CO2 , but these mechanisms are not well understood. Here, we review findings from elevated CO₂ experiments using a plant economics framework, highlighting how ecosystem responses to elevated CO₂ may depend on the costs and benefits of plant interactions with mycorrhizal fungi and symbiotic N-fixing microbes. We found that N-acquisition efficiency is positively correlated with leaf-level photosynthetic capacity and plant growth, and negatively with soil C storage. Plants that associate with ectomycorrhizal fungi and N-fixers may acquire N at a lower cost than plants associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. However, the additional growth in ectomycorrhizal plants is partly offset by decreases in soil C pools via priming. Collectively, our results indicate that predictive models aimed at quantifying C cycle feedbacks to global change may be improved by treating N as a resource that can be acquired by plants in exchange for energy, with different costs depending on plant interactions with microbial symbionts.