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1. Decreased Soil Organic Matter in a Long‐Term Soil Warming Experiment Lowers Soil Water Holding Capacity and Affects Soil Thermal and Hydrological Buffering

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JG005158  

   Werner, W. J.; Sanderman, J.; Melillo, J. M. (April 2020, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences)

   Abstract Long‐term soil warming can decrease soil organic matter (SOM), resulting in self‐reinforcing feedback to the global climate system. We investigated additional consequences of SOM reduction for soil water holding capacity (WHC) and soil thermal and hydrological buffering. At a long‐term soil warming experiment in a temperate forest in the northeastern United States, we suspended the warming treatment for 104 days during the summer of 2017. The formerly heated plot remained warmer (+0.39 °C) and drier (−0.024 cm³H₂O cm⁻³soil) than the control plot throughout the suspension. We measured decreased SOM content (−0.184 g SOM g⁻¹for O horizon soil, −0.010 g SOM g⁻¹for A horizon soil) and WHC (−0.82 g H₂O g⁻¹for O horizon soil, −0.18 g H₂O g⁻¹for A horizon soil) in the formerly heated plot relative to the control plot. Reduced SOM content accounted for 62% of the WHC reduction in the O horizon and 22% in the A horizon. We investigated differences in SOM composition as a possible explanation for the remaining reductions with Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra. We found FTIR spectra that correlated more strongly with WHC than SOM, but those particular spectra did not differ between the heated and control plots, suggesting that SOM composition affects WHC but does not explain treatment differences in this study. We conclude that SOM reductions due to soil warming can reduce WHC and hydrological and thermal buffering, further warming soil and decreasing SOM. This feedback may operate in parallel, and perhaps synergistically, with carbon cycle feedbacks to climate change. 

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2. Simulating Temperature in a Soil Incubation Experiment

   https://doi.org/10.3791/64081  

   Li, Jianwei; Areeveso, Precious; Wang, Xuehan; Jian, Siyang; Gamage, Lahiru (January 2022, Journal of Visualized Experiments)
3. Soil respiration response to decade-long warming modulated by soil moisture in a boreal forest

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01512-3  

   Liang, Guopeng; Stefanski, Artur; Eddy, William C; Bermudez, Raimundo; Montgomery, Rebecca A; Hobbie, Sarah E; Rich, Roy L; Reich, Peter B (September 2024, Nature Geoscience)
4. Soil swelling potential across Colorado: A digital soil mapping assessment

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.103599  

   Stell, Emma; Guevara, Mario; Vargas, Rodrigo (October 2019, Landscape and Urban Planning)
5. A soil structure-based modeling approach to soil heterotrophic respiration

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-025-01223-w  

   Jha, Achla; Aburto, Felipe; Calabrese, Salvatore (March 2025, Biogeochemistry)

   Abstract Soil microbial communities play a pivotal role in controlling soil carbon cycling and its climate feedback. Accurately predicting microbial respiration in soils has been challenged by the intricate resource heterogeneity of soil systems. This makes it difficult to formulate mathematical expressions for carbon fluxes at the soil bulk scale which are fundamental for soil carbon models. Recent advances in characterizing and modeling soil heterogeneity are promising. Yet they have been independent of soil structure characterizations, hence increasing the number of empirical parameters needed to model microbial processes. Soil structure, intended as the aggregate and pore size distributions, is, in fact, a key contributor to soil organization and heterogeneity and is related to the presence of microsites and associated environmental conditions in which microbial communities are active. In this study, we present a theoretical framework that accounts for the effects of microsites heterogeneity on microbial activity by explicitly linking heterogeneity to the distribution of aggregate sizes and their resources. From the soil aggregate size distribution, we derive a mathematical expression for heterotrophic respiration that accounts for soil biogeochemical heterogeneity through measurable biophysical parameters. The expression readily illustrates how various soil heterogeneity scenarios impact respiration rates. In particular, we compare heterogeneous with homogeneous scenarios for the same total carbon substrate and microbial biomass and identify the conditions under which respiration in heterogeneous soils (soils having non-uniform distribution of carbon substrate and microbial biomass carbon across different aggregate size classes) differs from homogeneous soils (soils having uniform distribution of carbon substrate and microbial biomass carbon across different aggregate size classes). The proposed framework may allow a simplified representation of dynamic microbial processes in soil carbon models across different land uses and land covers, key factors affecting soil structure. 

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