Existing Climate Change Will Lead to Pronounced Shifts in the Diversity of Soil Prokaryotes

ABSTRACTSoil bacteria are key to ecosystem function and maintenance of soil fertility. Leveraging associations of current geographic distributions of bacteria with historic climate, we predict that soil bacterial diversity will increase across the majority (∼75%) of the Tibetan Plateau and northern North America if bacterial communities equilibrate with existing climatic conditions. This prediction is possible because the current distributions of soil bacteria have stronger correlations with climate from ∼50 years ago than with current climate. This lag is likely associated with the time it takes for soil properties to adjust to changes in climate. The predicted changes are location specific and differ across bacterial taxa, including some bacteria that are predicted to have reductions in their distributions. These findings illuminate the widespread potential of climate change to influence belowground diversity and the importance of considering bacterial communities when assessing climate impacts on terrestrial ecosystems.IMPORTANCEThere have been many studies highlighting how plant and animal communities lag behind climate change, causing extinction and diversity debts that will slowly be paid as communities equilibrate. By virtue of their short generation times and dispersal abilities, soil bacteria might be expected to respond to climate change quickly and to be effectively in equilibrium with current climatic conditions. We found strong evidence to the contrary in Tibet and North America. These findings could significantly improve understanding of climate impacts on soil microbial communities.

Download Full-text

Climate change will lead to pronounced shifts in the diversity of soil microbial communities

10.1101/180174 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Joshua Ladau ◽

Yu Shi ◽

Xin Jing ◽

Jin-Sheng He ◽

Litong Chen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

North America ◽

Microbial Communities ◽

Bacterial Communities ◽

Soil Bacteria ◽

Soil Microbial Communities ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

The Tibetan Plateau ◽

Soil Microbial

ABSTRACTSoil bacteria are key to ecosystem function and maintenance of soil fertility. Leveraging associations of current geographic distributions of bacteria with historic climate, we predict that soil bacterial diversity will increase across the majority (~75%) of the Tibetan Plateau and northern North America if bacterial communities equilibrate with existing climatic conditions. This prediction is possible because the current distributions of soil bacteria have stronger correlations with climate from ~50 years ago than with current climate. This lag is likely associated with the time it takes for soil properties to adjust to changes in climate. The predicted changes are location specific and differ across bacterial taxa, including some bacteria that are predicted to have reductions in their distributions. These findings demonstrate the widespread influence that climate change will have on belowground diversity and highlight the importance of considering bacterial communities when assessing climate impacts on terrestrial ecosystems.IMPORTANCEThere have been many studies highlighting how plant and animal communities lag behind climate change, causing extinction and diversity debts that will slowly be paid as communities equilibrate. By virtue of their short generation times and dispersal abilities, soil bacteria might be expected to respond to climate change quickly and to be effectively in equilibrium with current climatic conditions. We found strong evidence to the contrary in Tibet and North America. These findings could significantly improve understanding of climate impacts on soil microbial communities.

Download Full-text

Increasing aridity reduces soil microbial diversity and abundance in global drylands

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1516684112 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 112 (51) ◽

pp. 15684-15689 ◽

Cited By ~ 269

Author(s):

Fernando T. Maestre ◽

Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo ◽

Thomas C. Jeffries ◽

David J. Eldridge ◽

Victoria Ochoa ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Soil Bacteria ◽

Soil Microbial Communities ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Soil Microbial Diversity ◽

Change Models ◽

Soil Microbial ◽

Soil Bacteria And Fungi ◽

Abundance And Diversity ◽

Bacteria And Fungi

Soil bacteria and fungi play key roles in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, yet our understanding of their responses to climate change lags significantly behind that of other organisms. This gap in our understanding is particularly true for drylands, which occupy ∼41% of Earth´s surface, because no global, systematic assessments of the joint diversity of soil bacteria and fungi have been conducted in these environments to date. Here we present results from a study conducted across 80 dryland sites from all continents, except Antarctica, to assess how changes in aridity affect the composition, abundance, and diversity of soil bacteria and fungi. The diversity and abundance of soil bacteria and fungi was reduced as aridity increased. These results were largely driven by the negative impacts of aridity on soil organic carbon content, which positively affected the abundance and diversity of both bacteria and fungi. Aridity promoted shifts in the composition of soil bacteria, with increases in the relative abundance of Chloroflexi and α-Proteobacteria and decreases in Acidobacteria and Verrucomicrobia. Contrary to what has been reported by previous continental and global-scale studies, soil pH was not a major driver of bacterial diversity, and fungal communities were dominated by Ascomycota. Our results fill a critical gap in our understanding of soil microbial communities in terrestrial ecosystems. They suggest that changes in aridity, such as those predicted by climate-change models, may reduce microbial abundance and diversity, a response that will likely impact the provision of key ecosystem services by global drylands.

Download Full-text

Plant-microbe Symbioses Reveal Underestimation of Modeled Climate Impacts

10.5194/bg-2018-293 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Mingjie Shi ◽

Joshua B. Fisher ◽

Richard P. Phillips ◽

Edward R. Brzostek

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Nitrogen Limitation ◽

Climate Models ◽

Climate Model ◽

Net Primary Production ◽

Carbon Sink ◽

Global Climate ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Microbial Symbionts

Abstract. The extent to which terrestrial ecosystems slow climate change by sequestering carbon hinges in part on nutrient limitation. We used a coupled carbon–climate model that accounts for the carbon cost to plants of supporting nitrogen-acquiring microbial symbionts to explore how nitrogen limitation affects global climate. The carbon costs of supporting symbiotic nitrogen uptake reduced net primary production, with the largest absolute effects occurring at low-latitudes and the largest relative changes occurring at high-latitudes. The largest impact occurred in high-latitude ecosystems, where such costs were estimated to increase temperature by 1.0 °C and precipitation by 9 mm yr−1. Globally, our model predicted that nitrogen limitation enhances temperature and decreases precipitation; as such, our results suggest that carbon expenditures to support nitrogen-acquiring microbial symbionts have critical consequences for Earth’s climate, and that carbon–climate models that omit these processes will over-predict the land carbon sink and under-predict climate change.

Download Full-text

Heterogeneity of Soil Bacterial and Bacteriophage Communities in Three Rice Agroecosystems and Potential Impacts On Nutrient Cycling

10.21203/rs.3.rs-1179635/v1 ◽

2022 ◽

Author(s):

Yajiao Wang ◽

Yu Liu ◽

Yuxing Wu ◽

Nan Wu ◽

Wenwen Liu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Community Structure ◽

Nutrient Cycling ◽

Soil Bacteria ◽

Southern China ◽

Eastern China ◽

Soil Microbial Communities ◽

Illumina Miseq ◽

Metagenomic Sequencing ◽

Soil Bacterial Diversity ◽

Soil Bacterial

Abstract Background: As genetic entities infecting and replicating only in bacteria, bacteriophages can regulate the community structure and functions of their host bacteria, but they are often overlooked because of their relatively low abundance. The ecological roles of bacteriophages in aquatic and forest environments have been widely explored, but those in agroecosystems remains limited. Here, we used metagenomic sequencing to analyze the diversity and interactions of bacteriophages and their host bacteria in soils from three typical rice agroecosystems in China: double cropping in Guangzhou, southern China, rice–wheat rotation cropping in Nanjing, eastern China and early maturing single cropping in Jiamusi, northeastern China. Bacteriophages were isolated and their functions on soil nitrogen cycling and effect on soil bacterial community structure were verified in pot inoculation experiments and Illumina MiSeq sequencing.Results: Soil bacterial and viral diversity and functions varied among the three agroecosystems. Genes detected in communities from the three agroecosystems were associated with typical functions; soil bacteria in Jiamusi were significantly enriched in genes related to carbohydrate metabolism, in Nanjing with xenobiotics biodegradation and metabolism, and in Guangzhou with virulence factors and scarce in secondary metabolite biosynthesis, which might lead to a significant occurrence of rice bacterial diseases. In the three ecosystems, 368 species of virus were detected. Notably, over-represented auxiliary carbohydrate-active enzyme (CAZyme) genes were identified in the viruses, which might assist host bacteria in metabolizing carbon, and 67.43% of these genes were present in Jiamusi. In bacteriophage isolation and inoculation experiments, Enterobacter bacteriophage-NJ reduced the nitrogen fixation capacity of soil by lysing N-fixing host bacteria and changed the soil bacterial diversity and community structure.Conclusions: Our results showed that diversity and function of paddy soil bacteria and viruses varied in the three agroecosystems. Soil bacteriophages can affect nutrient cycling by expressing auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) and lysing the host bacteria that are involved in biogeochemical cycles. These findings form a basis for better understanding bacterial and bacteriophage diversity in different rice agroecosystems, laying a solid foundation for further studies of soil microbial communities that support ecofriendly production of healthy rice.

Download Full-text

1.5°C Hotspots: Climate Hazards, Vulnerabilities, and Impacts

Annual Review of Environment and Resources ◽

10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-025835 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

pp. 135-163 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Carl-Friedrich Schleussner ◽

Delphine Deryng ◽

Sarah D'haen ◽

William Hare ◽

Tabea Lissner ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Scientific Evidence ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Sub Saharan Africa ◽

Global Mean Temperature ◽

Climate Hazards ◽

The Difference ◽

Sub Saharan ◽

The Tropics

Differentiating the impacts of climate change between 1.5°C and 2°C requires a regional and sector-specific perspective. Whereas for some regions and sectors the difference in climate variables might be indistinguishable from natural variability, other areas especially in the tropics and subtropics will experience significant shifts. In addition to region-specific changes in climatic conditions, vulnerability and exposure also differ substantially across the world. Even small differences in climate hazards can translate into sizeable impact differences for particularly vulnerable regions or sectors. Here, we review scientific evidence of regional differences in climate hazards at 1.5°C and 2°C and provide an assessment of selected hotspots of climate change, including small islands as well as rural, urban, and coastal areas in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, that are particularly affected by the additional 0.5°C global mean temperature increase. We interlink these with a review of the vulnerability and exposure literature related to these hotspots to provide an integrated perspective on the differences in climate impacts between 1.5°C and 2°C.

Download Full-text

Potential Transient Response of Terrestrial Vegetation and Carbon in Northern North America from Climate Change

Climate ◽

10.3390/cli7090113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (9) ◽

pp. 113

Author(s):

Steven A. Flanagan ◽

George C. Hurtt ◽

Justin P. Fisk ◽

Ritvik Sahajpal ◽

Maosheng Zhao ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

North America ◽

Time Scales ◽

Transient Response ◽

Landscape Heterogeneity ◽

Carbon Sink ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Ecosystem Model ◽

Terrestrial Vegetation ◽

Equilibrium Response

Terrestrial ecosystems and their vegetation are linked to climate. With the potential of accelerated climate change from anthropogenic forcing, there is a need to further evaluate the transient response of ecosystems, their vegetation, and their influence on the carbon balance, to this change. The equilibrium response of ecosystems to climate change has been estimated in previous studies in global domains. However, research on the transient response of terrestrial vegetation to climate change is often limited to domains at the sub-continent scale. Estimation of the transient response of vegetation requires the use of mechanistic models to predict the consequences of competition, dispersal, landscape heterogeneity, disturbance, and other factors, where it becomes computationally prohibitive at scales larger than sub-continental. Here, we used a pseudo-spatial ecosystem model with a vegetation migration sub-model that reduced computational intensity and predicted the transient response of vegetation and carbon to climate change in northern North America. The ecosystem model was first run with a current climatology at half-degree resolution for 1000 years to establish current vegetation and carbon distribution. From that distribution, climate was changed to a future climatology and the ecosystem model run for an additional 2000 simulation years. A model experimental design with different combinations of vegetation dispersal rates, dispersal modes, and disturbance rates produced 18 potential change scenarios. Results indicated that potential redistribution of terrestrial vegetation from climate change was strongly impacted by dispersal rates, moderately affected by disturbance rates, and marginally impacted by dispersal mode. For carbon, the sensitivities were opposite. A potential transient net carbon sink greater than that predicted by the equilibrium response was estimated on time scales of decades–centuries, but diminished over longer time scales. Continued research should further explore the interactions between competition, dispersal, and disturbance, particularly in regards to vegetation redistribution.

Download Full-text

Effect of Long-Term Cropping Systems on the Diversity of the Soil Bacterial Communities

Agronomy ◽

10.3390/agronomy9120878 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (12) ◽

pp. 878 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Zoltán Mayer ◽

Zita Sasvári ◽

Viktor Szentpéteri ◽

Beatrix Pethőné Rétháti ◽

Balázs Vajna ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Bacterial Communities ◽

Cropping Systems ◽

Sustainable Use ◽

Soil Microbial Communities ◽

Principal Component ◽

Crop Rotations ◽

Soil Bacterial Diversity ◽

Soil Biodiversity ◽

Soil Bacterial Communities ◽

Soil Bacterial

Soil microbial communities are involved in the maintenance of productivity and health of agricultural systems; therefore an adequate understanding of soil biodiversity plays a key role in ensuring sustainable use of soil. In the present study, we evaluated the influence of different cropping systems on the biodiversity of the soil bacterial communities, based on a 54-year field experiment established in Martonvásár, Hungary. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) fingerprinting technique was used to assess soil bacterial diversity and community structure in maize monoculture and three different crop rotations (maize–alfalfa, maize–wheat and the maize–barley–peas–wheat Norfolk type). No differences in richness and diversity were detected between maize monoculture and crop rotations except for the most intense rotation system (Norfolk-type). Although the principal component analysis did not reveal a clear separation between maize monoculture and the other rotation systems, the pairwise tests of analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) revealed that there are significant differences in the composition of bacterial communities between the maize monoculture and maize–alfalfa rotation as well as between wheat–maize and Norfolk-type rotation.

Download Full-text

Fungal and Bacterial Communities in the Rhizosphere ofPinus tabulaeformisRelated to the Restoration of Plantations and Natural Secondary Forests in the Loess Plateau, Northwest China

The Scientific World JOURNAL ◽

10.1155/2013/606480 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2013 ◽

pp. 1-12 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Hong-Xia Yu ◽

Chun-Yan Wang ◽

Ming Tang

Keyword(s):

Loess Plateau ◽

Bacterial Communities ◽

Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis ◽

Bacterial Species ◽

Soil Microbial Communities ◽

Principal Component ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Pinus Tabulaeformis ◽

Secondary Forests ◽

The Loess Plateau

Chinese pine (Pinus tabulaeformisCarr.) is widely planted for restoration in destroyed ecosystems of the Loess Plateau in China. Although soil microbial communities are important subsurface components of the terrestrial ecosystems, little is known about fungal and bacterial communities in the rhizosphere of planted and naturalP. tabulaeformisforests in the region. In this study, fungal and bacterial communities in the rhizosphere ofP. tabulaeformiswere analyzed by nested PCR-DGGE (denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis). Diversity analysis revealed that the values of the Shannon-Wiener index (H) and the Simpson index (D) of fungal communities were higher in natural secondary forests than in plantations except for the 3-year-old site. Moreover, the values of species richness,H, andDof the bacterial communities were also higher in the former. Totally, 18 fungal and 19 bacterial DGGE band types were successfully retrieved and sequenced. The dominant fungi in the rhizosphere ofP. tabulaeformisbelonged to the phylum of Basidiomycota, while the dominant bacteria belonged to the phylum of Proteobacteria. Principal component analysis indicated that fungal and bacterial species were more unitary in plantations than in natural secondary forests, and the majority of them were more likely to appear in the latter. Correlation analysis showed no significant correlation between the fungal and bacterial community diversities.

Download Full-text

Security implications of climate change: A decade of scientific progress

Journal of Peace Research ◽

10.1177/0022343320984210 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 58 (1) ◽

pp. 3-17

Author(s):

Nina von Uexkull ◽

Halvard Buhaug

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Scientific Progress ◽

Research Priorities ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Research Field ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Future Research ◽

Special Issue ◽

Causal Pathways ◽

Conflict Risk

The study of security implications of climate change has developed rapidly from a nascent area of academic inquiry into an important and thriving research field that traverses epistemological and disciplinary boundaries. Here, we take stock of scientific progress by benchmarking the latest decade of empirical research against seven core research priorities collectively emphasized in 35 recent literature reviews. On the basis of this evaluation, we discuss key contributions of this special issue. Overall, we find that the research community has made important strides in specifying and evaluating plausible indirect causal pathways between climatic conditions and a wide set of conflict-related outcomes and the scope conditions that shape this relationship. Contributions to this special issue push the research frontier further along these lines. Jointly, they demonstrate significant climate impacts on social unrest in urban settings; they point to the complexity of the climate–migration–unrest link; they identify how agricultural production patterns shape conflict risk; they investigate understudied outcomes in relation to climate change, such as interstate claims and individual trust; and they discuss the relevance of this research for user groups across academia and beyond. We find that the long-term implications of gradual climate change and conflict potential of policy responses are important remaining research gaps that should guide future research.

Download Full-text

Impact of litter quantity on the soil bacteria community during the decomposition of Quercus wutaishanica litter

10.7287/peerj.preprints.3161v1 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Quanchao Zeng ◽

Yang Liu ◽

Shaoshan An

Keyword(s):

Bacterial Community ◽

Litter Decomposition ◽

Relative Abundance ◽

Bacterial Communities ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Soil Bacterial Diversity ◽

Litter Addition ◽

Normal Quantity ◽

Soil Bacterial ◽

Litter Quantity

The forest ecosystem is the main component of terrestrial ecosystems. The global climate and the functions and processes of soil microbes in the ecosystem are all influenced by litter decomposition. The effects of litter decomposition on the abundance of soil microorganisms remain unknown. Here, we analyzed soil bacterial communities during the litter decomposition process in an incubation experiment under treatment with different litter quantities based on annual litterfall data (normal quantity, 200 g/(m2/yr); double quantity, 400 g/(m2/yr) and control, no litter). The results showed that litter quantity had significant effects on soil carbon fractions, nitrogen fractions, and bacterial community compositions, but significant differences were not found in the soil bacterial diversity. The normal litter quantity enhanced the relative abundance of Actinobacteria and Firmicutes and reduced the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes, Plantctomycets and Nitrospiare. The Beta-, Gamma-, and Deltaproteobacteria were significantly less abundant in the normal quantity litter addition treatment, and were subsequently more abundant in the double quantity litter addition treatment. The bacterial communities transitioned from Proteobacteria-dominant (Beta-, Gamma-, and Delta) to Actinobacteria-dominant during the decomposition of the normal quantity of litter. A cluster analysis showed that the double litter treatment and the control had similar bacterial community compositions. These results suggested that the double quantity litter limited the shift of the soil bacterial community. Our results indicate that litter decomposition alters bacterial dynamics under the accumulation of litter during the vegetation restoration process, which provides important significant guidelines for the management of forest ecosystems.

Download Full-text