Abstract
The magnitude and direction of the coupled feedbacks between the biotic and abiotic components of the terrestrial carbon cycle is a major source of uncertainty in coupled climate–carbon-cycle models1,2,3. Materially closed, energetically open biological systems continuously and simultaneously allow the two-way feedback loop between the biotic and abiotic components to take place4,5,6,7, but so far have not been used to their full potential in ecological research, owing to the challenge of achieving sustainable model systems6,7. We show that using materially closed soil–vegetation–atmosphere systems with pro rata carbon amounts for the main terrestrial carbon pools enables the establishment of conditions that balance plant carbon assimilation, and autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration fluxes over periods suitable to investigate short-term biotic carbon feedbacks. Using this approach, we tested an alternative way of assessing the impact of increased CO2 and temperature on biotic carbon feedbacks. The results show that without nutrient and water limitations, the short-term biotic responses could potentially buffer a temperature increase of 2.3 °C without significant positive feedbacks to atmospheric CO2. We argue that such closed-system research represents an important test-bed platform for model validation and parameterization of plant and soil biotic responses to environmental changes.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Meir, P., Cox, P. & Grace, J. The influence of terrestrial ecosystems on climate. Trends Ecol. Evol. 1, 254–260 (2006).
Friedlingstein, P. & Prentice, I. Carbon-climate feedbacks: A review of model and observation based estimates. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 2, 251–257 (2010).
Heimann, M. & Reichstein, M. Terrestrial ecosystem carbon dynamics and climate feedbacks. Nature 451, 289–292 (2008).
Hefin Jones, T. Biospherics, closed systems and life support. Trends Ecol. Evol. 11, 448–450 (1996).
Wilson, M. V. & Botkin, D. B. Models of simple microcosms: Emergent properties and the effect of complexity on stability. Am. Nat. 135, 414–434 (1990).
Lukac, M. et al. Non intrusive monitoring of atmospheric CO2 in analogue models of terrestrial carbon cycle. Methods Ecol. Evol. 2, 103–109 (2011).
Milcu, A., Lukac, M. & Ineson, P. The role of closed ecological systems in carbon cycle modelling. Climatic Change http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0234-2 (2011).
Cadule, P. et al. Benchmarking coupled climate-carbon models against long-term atmospheric CO2 measurements. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 24, GB2016 (2010).
Nelson, M., Allen, J., Ailing, A., Dempster, W. & Silverstone, S. Earth applications of closed ecological systems: Relevance to the development of sustainability in our global biosphere. Adv. Space Res. 31, 1649–1655 (2003).
Dempster, W. F. Tightly closed ecological systems reveal atmospheric subtleties-experience from Biosphere 2. Adv. Space Res. 42, 1951–1956 (2008).
Wheeler, R., Peterson, B., Sager, J. & Knott, W. Ethylene production by plants in a closed environment. Adv. Space Res. 18, 193–196 (1996).
Taub, F. B. Closed ecological systems. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 5, 139–160 (1974).
Nelson, M. et al. Using a closed ecological system to study Earth’s biosphere. Bioscience 43, 225–236 (1993).
Cohen, J. & Tilman, D. Biosphere 2 and biodiversity–the lessons so far. Science 274, 1150–1151 (1996).
Houghton, J. et al. Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change, Contribution of Working Group I to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (World Meteorological Organization/United Nations Environment Programme Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, 1995).
Solomon, S. et al. (eds) IPCC Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).
Lawton, J. The Ecotron facility at Silwood Park: The value of ‘big bottle’ experiments. Ecology 77, 665–669 (1996).
Nakicenovic, N. et al. IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).
Charney, J. et al. Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment (National Academy of Science, 1979).
Knutti, R. & Hegerl, G. The equilibrium sensitivity of the Earth’s temperature to radiation changes. Nature Geosci. 1, 735–743 (2008).
Ainsworth, E. & Long, S. What have we learned from 15 years of free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE)? A meta-analytic review of the responses of photosynthesis, canopy properties and plant production to rising CO2 . New Phytol. 165, 351–371 (2005).
Morison, J. & Lawlor, D. Interactions between increasing CO2 concentration and temperature on plant growth. Plant Cell Environ. 22, 659–682 (1999).
Farquhar, G. D., von Caemmerer, S. & Berry, J. A. Models of photosynthesis. Plant Physiol. 125, 42–45 (2001).
Medlyn, B. E. et al. Reconciling the optimal and empirical approaches to modelling stomatal conductance. Glob. Change Biol. 17, 2134–2144 (2011).
Friedlingstein, P. et al. Climate-carbon cycle feedback analysis: Results from the C4MIP model intercomparison. J. Clim. 19, 3337–3353 (2006).
Subke, J. A. & Bahn, M. On the ‘Temperature sensitivity’ of soil respiration: Can we use the immeasurable to predict the unknown? Soil Biol. Biochem. 42, 1653–1656 (2010).
Lloyd, J. & Farquhar, G. D. Effects of rising temperatures and [CO2] on the physiology of tropical forest trees. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 363, 1811–1817 (2008).
Knott, W. M., Sager, J. C. & Wheeler, R. Achieving and documenting closure in plant growth facilities. Adv. Space Res. 12, 115–123 (1992).
Team, R. D. C. R. A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2009).
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge financial support by the Natural Environment Research Council. Great support and advice has been offered by G. Mace and the Ecotron Steering Committee (M. Press, S. Hartley and J. Roy). We thank T. Sloan, M. Saunders and H. Vallack for technical support, CO2 additions and sample analysis. We also thank M. J. Crawley for the advice on statistical analysis and A. Fitter for comments on the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
A.M. wrote the manuscript. P.I. was responsible for the original concept and acquiring financial support and with A.M. and M.L. designed the experiments. A.M. and M.L. carried out the experiments and the statistical analyses. J-A.S. analysed the soil and plant samples. D.W. and A.M. designed specific pieces of equipment and engineered the materially closed systems. D.W. implemented the open-path infrared gas analyser and carried out the TREND programming. R.A. contributed to the TREND programming and database maintenance. P.M. and A.H. conducted preliminary experiments. All authors discussed the results and the structure of the paper, commented and revised the manuscript text.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Milcu, A., Lukac, M., Subke, JA. et al. Biotic carbon feedbacks in a materially closed soil–vegetation–atmosphere system. Nature Clim Change 2, 281–284 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1448
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1448
This article is cited by
-
Elevated [CO2] mitigates the impacts of heat stress in eucalyptus seedlings
Theoretical and Experimental Plant Physiology (2022)
-
Effects of soil organism interactions and temperature on carbon use efficiency in three different forest soils
Soil Ecology Letters (2021)
-
An experimental work to investigate the capabilities of plants to remove particulate matters in an enclosed greenhouse
Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health (2020)
-
Differential influence of elevated CO2 on gas exchange and water use efficiency of four indigenous shrub species distributed in different sandy environments in central Inner Mongolia
Ecological Research (2018)
-
Effects of elevated CO2, warming and precipitation change on plant growth, photosynthesis and peroxidation in dominant species from North China grassland
Planta (2014)