Soil water fluctuations: microbial community responses and CO2 production

Water availability is one of the primary controllers of microbial activity in soils. Likely even more important to microbial activity than static values of soil water potential are changes in soil water potential; changes in soil water potential may trigger pulses of or cross thresholds for microbial activity. How do increases and declines in soil water potential affect microbial activity and rates of carbon dioxide (CO2) production from soil? While extremely dry soils have very low rates of CO2 production, wetting of dry soil is known to initiate a large CO2 pulse known as the Birch effect. We studied this pulse in two California annual grassland soils while concurrently monitoring microbial resuscitation. We also examined the impacts of reduced rainfall in a successional grassland in Michigan, with a focus on changes in microbial activity during a dry down period. In both systems we used relative RNA quantity to identify when different microorganisms were relatively more active. Upon wetting of dry soil, we found that the large CO2 pulse occurred during the resuscitation of the microbial community. We identified three resuscitation strategies (rapid, intermediate and delayed responders) and found that they are phylogenetically conserved, with related organisms displaying the same strategy. During a soil dry down event, we found a decline in the rate of CO2 production from soils and examined the concurrent change in the microbial community during this 7-day period. We also investigated how a summer of greater water potential fluctuation, due to reduced rainfall, impacted the stability of the microbial community. Our results demonstrate that changes in water potential can drive changes in microbial activity, leading to serious implications for soil CO2 production.