Soil carbon release enhanced by increased litter input in a degraded semi-arid forest soil

NALDINI, BETANIA; PEREZ-HARGUINDEGUY, NATALIA; KOWALJOW, ESTEBAN

JOURNAL OF ARID ENVIRONMENTS

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2021 vol. 186

0140-1963

Land use change may modify litter inputs to soil, with important consequences for belowground processes suchas organic carbon (C) mineralization. In this study, we experimentally tested the effects of changes on litterquantity and quality on CO2 release in intensively used soils from the Chaco Forest. We applied leaf litter of twospecies (representing the highest and lowest litter C:N ratio of dominant woody species found in the system) intwo doses (minimum and maximum litter fall recorded in the system) to the soil. We incubated the soil andmeasured CO2 release on different dates. Litter quantity rather than litter quality was the fundamental determinant of soil CO2 release rates in the Chaco forest. Accordingly, changes in litter input would have the potentialto impact soil organic C dynamics, with positive feedback to the atmospheric C pool.