Separating soil respiration components with stable isotopes: natural abundance and labelling approaches

doi:10.3832/ifor0541-003

Due to the potential of forest ecosystems contributing to CO₂ increase as well as to climate change mitigation, forest-atmosphere CO₂ exchange has been intensively studied over last decades. However, the contribution of individual components of belowground carbon pools is still poorly known. In particular, there is no unequivocal means to separate root respiration (autotrophic) from heterotrophic respiration by soil microflora and fauna. Most studies investigating soil respiration disturbed the soil and tried to exclude autrophic respiration. Here we review alternative non invasive methods to separate the two components. Those methods share the application of the stable carbon isotope ¹³C, using either local changes in natural abundance of ¹³CO₂ or artificial labelling of trees with CO₂ enriched or depleted in ¹³C. We conclude that the applicability of natural stable isotope methods is still limited in forest ecosystems because only in a few cases there are large enough differences in ¹³C among soil carbon pools (usually due to the earlier presence of a C₄ canopy, which is seldom in forests). On the other hand, artificial labelling with CO₂ either enriched or depleted in ¹³C is now in a widely used for partitioning soil respiration components. However, recent findings gave clear evidence that measurements of soil CO₂ efflux can be substantially influenced by the return efflux of the abiotic label. Still, especially the combination of Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) with dual δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O stable isotope approach has the potential to provide new answers on the response sensitivity of turnover dynamics of the largest belowground soil carbon storage to elevated temperature and CO₂.

Keywords

Carbon stable isotopes, Labelling, Natural abundance, Autotrophic and heterotrophic soil respiration

Authors’ address

(1)

Technical University Munich, Dept. Limnologische Station Iffeldorf, Hofmark 1 - 3, D-82393 Iffeldorf (Germany)

(2)

Dept. Forest Ecology, University of Helsinki, Latokartanonkaari 7, FI-00014 Helsinki (Finland)

Corresponding author

E Braig
emanuelbraig@web.de

Citation

Braig E, Tupek B (2010). Separating soil respiration components with stable isotopes: natural abundance and labelling approaches. iForest 3: 92-94. - doi: 10.3832/ifor0541-003

Academic Editor

Marcus Schaub

Paper history

Received: May 25, 2010
Accepted: May 31, 2010

First online: Jul 15, 2010
Publication Date: Jul 15, 2010
Publication Time: 1.50 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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