Defining trait-based microbial strategies with consequences for soil carbon cycling under climate change

Abstract

Microorganisms are critical in terrestrial carbon cycling because their growth, activity and interactions with the environment largely control the fate of recent plant carbon inputs, as well as the stability of assimilated carbon (Gleixner, 2013; Schimel and Schaeffer, 2012). Soil carbon stocks reflect a balance between microbial decomposition and stabilization of organic carbon. The balance can shift under altered environmental conditions (Davidson and Janssens, 2006), and new research suggests that knowledge of microbial physiology may be critical for projecting changes in soil carbon and improving the prognosis of climate change feedbacks (Allison et al., 2010; Bradford et al., 2016; Liang et al., 2017; Wieder et al., 2015). Still, predicting the ecosystem implications of microbial processes remains a challenge. Here we argue that this challenge can be m ...