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Sensitivity of soil organic matter to climate and fire in a desert grassland

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Abstract

Drylands contain a third of the organic carbon stored in global soils; however, the long-term dynamics of soil organic carbon in drylands remain poorly understood relative to dynamics of the vegetation carbon pool. We examined long-term patterns in soil organic matter (SOM) against both climate and prescribed fire in a Chihuahuan Desert grassland in central New Mexico, USA. SOM concentration was estimated by loss-on-ignition from soils at 0–20 cm depth each spring and fall for 25 years (1989–2014) in unburned desert grassland and from 2003 to 2014 following a prescribed fire. SOM concentration did not have a long-term trend but fluctuated seasonally at both burned and unburned sites, ranging from a minimum of 0.9% to a maximum of 3.3%. SOM concentration declined nonlinearly in wet seasons and peaked in dry seasons. These long-term results contrast not only with the positive relationships between aboveground net primary production and precipitation for this region, but also with previous reports that wetter sites have more SOM across drylands globally, suggesting that space is not a good substitute for time in predicting dryland SOM dynamics. We suggest that declines in SOM in wet periods are caused by increased soil respiration, runoff, leaching, and/or soil erosion. In addition to tracking natural variability in climate, SOM concentration also decreased 14% following prescribed fire, a response that magnified over time and has persisted for nearly a decade due to the slow recovery of primary production. Our results document the surprisingly dynamic nature of soil organic matter and its high sensitivity to climate and fire in a dry grassland ecosystem characteristic of the southwestern USA.

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Data and code availability

Data and code associated with this study are available at Environmental Data Initiative Data Portal: https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/d2d7344c94a67d2ce5dd3b53a2dea839.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation for Long-Term Ecological Research including DEB 1655499 and 1748133.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    Enqing Hou & Yiqi Luo

  2. Department of Biology, MSC03-2020, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Jennifer A. Rudgers, Scott L. Collins, Marcy E. Litvak, Carleton S. White & Douglas I. Moore

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  1. Enqing Hou
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Contributions

CSW, DIM, JAR, and SLC designed the study. CSW and DIM collected soil samples and performed soil analyses. SLC and JAR provided ANPP data. EH and JAR performed the statistical analyses. EH wrote the first draft with significant contributions from all authors.

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Correspondence to Enqing Hou.

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Hou, E., Rudgers, J.A., Collins, S.L. et al. Sensitivity of soil organic matter to climate and fire in a desert grassland. Biogeochemistry 156, 59–74 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-020-00713-3

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