Autotrophic component of soil respiration is repressed by drought more than the heterotrophic one in a dry grassland

Abstract

Abstract. Summer droughts projected to increase in Central Europe due to climate change strongly influence the carbon cycle of ecosystems. Persistent respiration activities during drought periods are responsible for a significant carbon loss, which may turn the ecosystem from sink to source of carbon. There are still gaps in our knowledge regarding the characteristic changes taking place in the respiration of the different components of the ecosystem respiration in response to drought events. Here, we combined a physical separation of soil respiration components with continuous measurements of soil CO2 efflux and its isotopic (13C) signal at a dry grassland site in Hungary. The physical separation of soil respiration components was achieved by the use of inox meshes and tubes inserted into the soil. The root-excluded and root- and mycorrhiza-excluded treatments served to measure the isotopic signal of the rhizospheric, mycorrhizal fungi and heterotrophic components, respectively. In the dry grassland investigated in this study the three components of the soil CO2 efflux decreased at different rates under drought conditions. During drought the contribution made by the heterotrophic components was the highest. Rhizospheric component was the most sensitive to soil drying with its relative contribution to the total soil respiration dropping from 71 ± 4 % (non-stressed) to 36 ± 12 % under drought conditions. According to our results, the heterotrophic component of soil respiration is the major contributor to the respiration activities during drought events.