Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 5, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1038/srep11043
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41272193]
- Chinese National Basic Research Program [2014CB954202]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) plays an important role in the global carbon cycle because the CO2 emitted from soil respiration is an important source of atmospheric CO2. Carbon isotopic fractionation occurs during SOM decomposition, which leads to C-12 to enrich in the released CO2 while C-13 to enrich in the residual SOM. Understanding the isotope fractionation has been demonstrated to be helpful for studying the global carbon cycle. Soil and litter samples were collected from soil profiles at 27 different sites located along a vertical transect from 1200 to 4500 m above sea level (a.s.l.) in the south-eastern side of the Tibetan Plateau. Their carbon isotope ratios, C and N concentrations were measured. In addition, fiber and lignin in litter samples were also analyzed. Carbon isotope fractionation factor (a) during SOM decomposition was estimated indirectly as the slope of the relationship between carbon isotope ratios of SOM and soil C concentrations. This study shows that litter quality and soil water play a significant role in isotope fractionation during SOM decomposition, and the carbon isotope fractionation factor, a, increases with litter quality and soil water content. However, we found that temperature had no significant impact on the a variance.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available