Time series of soil microbial growth and respiration rates after rewetting of dry soils

Xiankun Li, Ainara Leizeaga, Lettice Hicks, Irene Cordero, Jin-Tao Li, Yuqian Tang, Sara Winterfeldt, Albert C. Brangarí, Annelein Meisner, Stefano Manzoni, Johannes Rousk

This data includes time series of soil bacterial growth rates, fungal growth rates, community-level respiration rates, and relevant environmental and soil condition information.

This data was collated from published laboratory studies to test the two hypotheses that: i) after rewetting of dry soil, the microbial resource investment shifts from stress tolerance to high yield or resource acquisition, fungal to bacterial dominance decreases through time, and carbon use efficiency increases up to a peak and then declines after rewetting; ii) soil and climatic conditions that have primed microbial communities to respond to stress promote faster shifts in life history strategy, fungal to bacterial dominance, and faster carbon use efficiency recovery after rewetting.

Data were generated mainly around 2018 to 2021, as described in ten publications that are used as basis for creating this dataset. This data could be used to understand microbial carbon use strategy after rewetting dry soils, as well as measure microbial resilience and resistance to droughts.

Citation

Xiankun Li, Ainara Leizeaga, Lettice Hicks, Irene Cordero, Jin-Tao Li, Yuqian Tang, Sara Winterfeldt, Albert C. Brangarí, Annelein Meisner, Stefano Manzoni, Johannes Rousk (2024) Time series of soil microbial growth and respiration rates after rewetting of dry soils. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/li-2024-microbial-growth-respiration-1

References

Li X, Leizeaga A, Rousk J, Zhou S, Hugelius G, Manzoni S (2024) Recovery of Soil Microbial Metabolism After Rewetting Depends on Interacting Environmental Conditions and Changes in Functional Groups and Life History Strategies. Global Change Biology 30:e17522. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17522

Brangarí AC, Lyonnard B, Rousk J (2022) Soil depth and tillage can characterize the soil microbial responses to drying-rewetting. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 173:108806. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2022.108806

Cordero I, Leizeaga A, Hicks LC, Rousk J, Bardgett RD (2023) High intensity perturbations induce an abrupt shift in soil microbial state. The ISME Journal 17:2190–2199. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-023-01512-y

Hicks LC (2023) Drying-rewetting of permanent pasture and agricultural soils induces a shift towards microbial use of more C-rich organic matter. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 178:108928. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2022.108928

Hicks LC, Ang R, Leizeaga A, Rousk J (2019) Bacteria constrain the fungal growth response to drying-rewetting. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 134:108–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2019.03.006

Hicks LC, Lin S, Rousk J (2022) Microbial resilience to drying-rewetting is partly driven by selection for quick colonizers. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 167:108581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2022.108581

Leizeaga A, Hicks LC, Manoharan L, Hawkes CV, Rousk J (2020) Drought legacy affects microbial community trait distributions related to moisture along a savannah grassland precipitation gradient. Journal of Ecology 109:3195–3210. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13550

Li J-T, Xu H, Hicks LC, Brangarí AC, Rousk J (2023) Comparing soil microbial responses to drying-rewetting and freezing-thawing events. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 178:108966. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2023.108966

Meisner A, Bååth E, Rousk J (2013) Microbial growth responses upon rewetting soil dried for four days or one year. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 66:188–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2013.07.014

Winterfeldt S, Cruz-Paredes C, Rousk J, Leizeaga A (2024) Microbial resistance and resilience to drought across a European climate gradient. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 199:109574 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2024.109574

Tang Y, Winterfeldt S, Brangarí AC, Hicks LC, Rousk J (2023) Higher resistance and resilience of bacterial growth to drought in grasslands with historically lower precipitation. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 177:108889 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2022.108889

Data description

This dataset consists of the following two csv files including the described parameters.

1. environmental-data.csv Environmental data, column 1 – 15.
   1. soil_number Identifier for individual time series (matching the ones in the file microbial-responses.csv).
   2. author_year Identifier for individual data sources. The corresponding complete references are provided in the reference list.
   3. longitude [degrees] Longitude at the sampling site.
   4. latitude [degrees] Latitude at the sampling site land cover.
   5. land_cover Landcover at the sampling site.
   6. aridity_index Ratio of mean annual precipitation over potential evapotranspiration at the sampling site.
   7. pH Soil pH at the sampling site.
   8. carbon_availability [µg C g⁻¹ h⁻¹] Carbon acquisition rate in the moist control (i.e., the sum of fungal and bacterial growth rate, and respiration rate) divided by soil organic matter content carbon use efficiency in the moist control: carbon use efficiency in the moist control.
   9. fungal_to_bacterial_dominance_in_the_moist_control Fungal to bacterial growth ratio in the moist control.
   10. carbon_use_efficiency_in_the_moist_control Carbon use efficiency in the moist control, calculated by growth rate divided by the sum up of growth rate and respiration rate.
   11. incubation_temperature [°C] Temperature during the laboratory.
   12. soil_moisture_at_the_end_of_drying [%WHC] Soil moisture level at the end of drying phase in the moist control.
   13. soil_moisture_in_the_moist_control [%WHC] Soil moisture level maintained in the moisture control.
   14. soil_moisture_after_rewetting [%WHC] Soil moisture level reached at the end of the rewetting.
   15. soil_moisture_increment_at_rewetting [%WHC] Difference between soil moisture after rewetting and soil moisture at the end of drying.
2. microbial-responses.csv Time series of microbial responses to rewetting data, column 1 – 5.
   1. soil_number Identifier for individual time series (matching the ones in the file environmental-data.csv).
   2. time [hour] The time points of measurements,
   3. bacterial_growth_rate [μg C/h/g] measured bacterial growth rate.
   4. fungal_growth_rate [μg C/h/g] measured fungal growth rate.
   5. respiration_rate [μg C/h/g] measured respiration rate.

Comments

The data was collated from published laboratory studies in which respiration rates, bacterial growth rates, and fungal growth rates were measured after rewetting dry soils. Growth rates originally measured as rates of incorporation of labelled substrates were all converted to carbon units as μg C/ dry g soil (see Section 2.2 of the reference Li et al. 2024).

This data was primarily generated from the laboratory led by Johannes Rousk at Lund University. Soil sampling was conducted mainly in Europe.