Collaborative Research: Climate controls over ecosystem respiration: Using isotopes to determine the sources and age of respired carbon

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ABSTRACTCarbon enters ecosystems through a single process, photosynthesis, and nearly all is returned to the atmosphere through respiration, some 50-80% of which occurs below ground. Soil respiration integrates root metabolism and the activity of decomposer organisms. While the major processes affecting plant metabolic (autotrophic) respiration and decomposition rates (heterotrophic respiration) are known, the ability to predict variations in soil respiration in space and time is limited - a major uncertainty in the current and future carbon cycle. The work proposed here will combine new measurement and modeling approaches for separating autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration, and determining the age of C respired from soils. At field sites in the Ameriflux network that span a range of North American biomes and climates, these methods will include: (1) frequent, automated, measurements of soil respiration and related factors; (2) isotope mass balance methods based on measurements of stable isotopes and radiocarbon in respired CO2; and (3) incubations to determine responses of heterotrophic respiration components to changing soil conditions; and (4) at some sites, manipulation of soil moisture content through rainfall exclusion. The data generated will be used to partition soil respired C into autotrophic and heterotrophic components, to determine the age of heterotrophically respired C and identify the components of soil organic matter contributing to its production, and to determine how these relationships chance with controlling variables(photosynthesis rate, soil conditions, etc). The results will be used to parameterize a newautotrophic respiration component of the CASA ecosystem model, and to test how well the model predicts the balance of sources of heterotrophic respiration on seasonal to interannual timescales. Predictions of the CASA model will be further tested across regional gradients spanning (1) a climosequence and (2) a suite of sites from tropical forest to tundra. We will use atmospheric records of seasonal variation in C isotopes (13C at the global network sites and 14C in atmospheric CO2 at Point Barrow, Alaska) as a global test of the CASA model's ability to determine the seasonal to interannual exchange of C between northern hemisphere terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere.Intellectual merit. Separating the components of ecosystem respiration is one of the fundamentally important research challenges in ecosystem science. This activity will use new tools, in particular, innovative use of the radiocarbon tracer in measurements and models, to develop process level understanding of C fluxes at selected Ameriflux sites.Broader impacts. This work will advance fundamental understanding of how terrestrial ecosystems influence the global carbon cycle, and will improve projections of future atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide by showing how heterotrophic respiration will respond to changes in temperature and moisture. Our program to educate students through a short course in radiocarbon at the W.M. Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility will train the next generation of scientists in the applications of radiocarbon to study land and ocean C cycling.