Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: . Fungi and bacteria are the two dominant groups of soil microbial communities worldwide. By controlling the turnover of soil organic matter, these organisms directly regulate the exchange of carbon between the soil and the atmosphere. Fundamental differences in the physiology and life history of bacteria and fungi suggest that variation in the biogeography of soil fungal and bacterial relative abundance could drive striking differences in carbon decomposition and soil organic matter formation across different biomes. However, a lack of global and predictive information on the distribution of these organisms in terrestrial ecosystems has prevented the inclusion of soil fungal and bacterial relative abundance and the associated processes into global biogeochemical models. Here, we used a global scale dataset in the top soil surface (>3000 distinct observations of soil fungal and bacterial abundance) to generate the first quantitative and spatially high resolution (1 km) explicit map of soil fungal proportion, defined as fungi/fungi + bacteria, across terrestrial ecosystems. We reveal striking latitudinal trends where fungal dominance increases in cold and high latitude environments with large soil carbon stocks. There was strong non-linear response of fungal dominance to environmental gradient, i.e., mean annual temperature (MAT) and net primary productivity (NPP). Fungi and bacteria dominated in regions with low and high MAT and NPP, respectively, thus representing slow vs. fast soil energy channels, a concept with a long history in soil ecology. These high-resolution models provide the first steps towards representing the major soil microbial groups and their functional differences in global biogeochemical models to improve predictions of soil organic matter turnover under current and future climate scenarios. Raw datasets and global maps generated in this study are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19556419 (Yu, 2022).
Source: Earth system science data
Authors: Kailiang Yu, Johan van den Hoogen, Zhiqiang Wang, Colin Averill, Devin Routh, Gabriel Reuben Smith, Rebecca E. Drenovsky, Kate M. Scow, Fei Mo, Mark P. Waldrop, Yuanhe Yang, Weize Tang, Franciska T. De Vries, Richard D. Bardgett, Peter Manning, Felipe Bastida, Sara G. Baer, Elizabeth M. Bach, Carlos García, Qingkui Wang, Linna Ma, Baodong Chen, Xianjing He, Sven Teurlincx, Amber Heijboer, James A. Bradley, Thomas W. Crowther
Institutions: ETH Zurich, Institute of Integrative Biology, Southwest Minzu University, Stanford University, John Carroll University, University of California, Davis, Northwest A&F University, Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Botany, State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, South China Botanical Garden, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Amsterdam, University of Manchester, University of Bergen, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura, University of Kansas, The Nature Conservancy, Institute of Applied Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Chongqing University, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Utrecht University, Wageningen University & Research, Queen Mary University of London
Language: English
Subfield: Soil Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDGs: Life on land, Climate action
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,509
OpenAlex ID: W4296629326