2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference

March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH

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5/23/2019 | 9:15 AM - 9:30 AM | TEMPERATURE VARIANCE LEADS TO UNDERESTIMATION OF THE TEMPERATURE SENSITIVITY OF PLANT LITTER DECOMPOSITION | 254 B

TEMPERATURE VARIANCE LEADS TO UNDERESTIMATION OF THE TEMPERATURE SENSITIVITY OF PLANT LITTER DECOMPOSITION

Temperature sensitivity of plant litter decomposition is critical to estimate, as temperature increases will accelerate losses of plant carbon to CO2. A common approach to assess temperature x decomposition relationships uses spatial gradients in temperature to estimate activation energies (Ea). These estimates relate decomposition rates to average temperatures across sites, ignoring within-site temperature variance. We hypothesized that temperature variance can increase decomposition and affect predictions of temperature sensitivity. We tested this by simulating plant litter decomposition in terrestrial and aquatic environments with global and U.S. temperature datasets and explored patterns in temperature means and variance. We found that variance is typically higher at cooler mean temperatures, particularly in terrestrial datasets. Estimates of temperature sensitivity (apparent Ea) made from data simulated with real time series of temperature and known temperature sensitivity (inherent Ea) showed that variance in temperature could bias estimates of Ea by up to 0.3 eV. Our results suggest that commonly used methods may underestimate the temperature dependence of litter decomposition, particularly in terrestrial environments. Thus, we encourage assessment of temperature mean and variance relationships when estimating activation energies to improve predictions of future carbon loss.

Modeling
Organic Matter
Temperature

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Presenters/Authors

Nathan Tomczyk (), University of Georgia, nathan.tomczyk@gmail.com;