Soil Warming Alters the Nitrogen Cycle: Ecosystem Implications and Feedbacks to the Climate System

Increases in soil temperatures associated with global warming have the potential to accelerate nitrogen turnover in soils, which could alter other biogeochemical processes and eventually affect the structure of these forests. Over the past five years we have been studying soil and plant responses to soil warming in large plots in a deciduous stand at Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts. We have heated the soil 5°C above ambient and measured nitrogen cycling parameters including in situ net nitrogen mineralization and nitrification, nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes. We have also measured various aspects of the carbon cycle including soil respiration and carbon accumulation in vegetation. Over the first five years of the study, we observed a mean annual increase in the net nitrogen mineralized in the warmed plot of 23.8 kg N ha-1. While nitrification rates were low throughout the five years in the control plot, they increased in the warmed plot to account for over 25% of the total net nitrogen mineralized in year five. The increase in nitrogen mineralization stimulated tree growth and carbon storage in woody tissue in the warmed plot. The increased carbon storage in the trees compensated for more than half of the carbon lost from the soils due to accelerated decay of soil organic matter and so reduced the magnitude of the positive feedback to the climate system due to soil warming. We hypothesize that the increase in nitrification we observed will eventually "open" the nitrogen cycle and make gaseous and solution losses more likely. To date, however, we have measured no major losses of nitrous oxide or solution losses of nitrate in response to soil warming. Trees with the capacity to use nitrate may have a competitive advantage in a warmer world. Nitrate-using plants have an inducible enzyme that transforms nitrate to ammonium, a key building block for producing essential amino acids and proteins. Studies by our research group and by others have shown that red maples (Acer rubrum), when grown with high levels of nitrate, have a greater ability to produce this enzyme than many other species common to the region's forests. We have also observed that red maple seedlings and saplings show a higher growth response to soil warming than juvenile plants of other species. Our working hypothesis is that some of this response is linked to the capacity of red maple to use the nitrate produced in the warmed soils. In the long term, warming could lead to red maples becoming a more dominant tree in the forests of southern New England.