Climate Change Impairs Nitrogen Cycling in European Beech Forests.

European beech forests growing on marginal calcareous soils have been proposed to be vulnerable to decreased soil water availability. This could result in a large-scale loss of ecological services and economical value in a changing climate. In order to evaluate the potential consequences of this drought-sensitivity, we investigated potential species range shifts for European beech forests on calcareous soil in the 21st century by statistical species range distribution modelling for present day and projected future climate conditions. We found a dramatic decline by 78% until 2080. Still the physiological or biogeochemical mechanisms underlying the drought sensitivity of European beech are largely unknown. Drought sensitivity of beech is commonly attributed to plant physiological constraints. Furthermore, it has also been proposed that reduced soil water availability could promote nitrogen (N) limitation of European beech due to impaired microbial N cycling in soil, but this hypothesis has not yet been tested. Hence we investigated the influence of simulated climate change (increased temperatures, reduced soil water availability) on soil gross microbial N turnover and plant N uptake in the beech-soil interface of a typical mountainous beech forest stocking on calcareous soil in SW Germany. For this purpose, triple 15N isotope labelling of intact beech seedling-soil-microbe systems was combined with a space-for-time climate change experiment. We found that nitrate was the dominant N source for beech natural regeneration. Reduced soil water content caused a persistent decline of ammonia oxidizing bacteria and therefore, a massive attenuation of gross nitrification rates and nitrate availability in the soil. Consequently, nitrate and total N uptake of beech seedlings were strongly reduced so that impaired growth of beech seedlings was observed already after one year of exposure to simulated climatic change. We conclude that the N cycle in this ecosystem and here specifically nitrification is vulnerable to reduced water availability, which can directly lead to nutritional limitations of beech seedlings. This tight link between reduced water availability, drought stress for nitrifiers, decreased gross nitrification rates and nitrate availability and finally nitrate uptake by beech seedlings could represent the Achilles' heel for beech under climate change stresses.

Climate change induces shifts in abundance and activity pattern of bacteria and archaea catalyzing major transformation steps in nitrogen turnover in a soil from a mid-European beech forest.

Ongoing climate change will lead to more extreme weather events, including severe drought periods and intense drying rewetting cycles. This will directly influence microbial nitrogen (N) turnover rates in soil by changing the water content and the oxygen partial pressure. Therefore, a space for time climate change experiment was conducted by transferring intact beech seedling-soil mesocosms from a northwest (NW) exposed site, representing today's climatic conditions, to a southwest (SW) exposed site, providing a model climate for future conditions with naturally occurring increased soil temperature (+0.8°C in average). In addition, severe drought and intense rainfall was simulated by a rainout shelter at SW and manual rewetting after 39 days drought, respectively. Soil samples were taken in June, at the end of the drought period (August), 24 and 72 hours after rewetting (August) and after a regeneration period of four weeks (September). To follow dynamics of bacterial and archaeal communities involved in N turnover, abundance and activity of nitrifiers, denitrifiers, N2-fixing microbes and N-mineralizers was analyzed based on marker genes and the related transcripts by qPCR from DNA and RNA directly extracted from soil. Abundance of the transcripts was reduced under climate change with most pronounced effects for denitrification. Our results revealed that already a transfer from NW to SW without further treatment resulted in decreased cnor and nosZ transcripts, encoding for nitric oxide reductase and nitrous oxide reductase, respectively, while nirK transcripts, encoding for nitrite reductase, remained unaffected. Severe drought additionally led to reduced nirK and cnor transcripts at SW. After rewetting, nirK transcripts increased rapidly at both sites, while cnor and nosZ transcripts increased only at NW. Our data indicate that the climate change influences activity pattern of microbial communities involved in denitrification processes to a different extend, which may impact emission rates of the greenhouse gas N2O.

Human and climate impact on ¹5N natural abundance of plants and soils in high-mountain ecosystems: a short review and two examples from the Eastern Pamirs and Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Population pressure increasingly endangers high-mountain ecosystems such as the pastures in the Eastern Pamirs and the mountain forests on Mt. Kilimanjaro. At the same time, these ecosystems constitute the economic basis for millions of people living there. In our study, we, therefore, aimed at characterising the land-use effects on soil degradation and N-cycling by determining the natural abundance of (15)N. A short review displays that δ(15)N of plant-soil systems may often serve as an integrated indicator of N-cycles with more positive δ(15)N values pointing towards N-losses. Results for the high-mountain pastures in the Eastern Pamirs show that intensively grazed pastures are significantly enriched in (15)N compared to the less-exploited pastures by 3.5 ‰, on average. This can be attributed to soil organic matter degradation, volatile nitrogen losses, nitrogen leaching and a general opening of the N-cycle. Similarly, the intensively degraded savanna soils, the cultivated soils and the soils under disturbed forests on the foothill of Mt. Kilimanjaro reveal very positive δ(15)N values around 6.5 ‰. In contrast, the undisturbed forest soils in the montane zone are more depleted in (15)N, indicating that here the N-cycle is relatively closed. However, significantly higher δ(15)N values characterise the upper montane forest zone at the transition to the subalpine zone. We suggest that this reflects N-losses by the recently monitored and climate change and antropogenically induced increasing fire frequency pushing the upper montane rainforest boundary rapidly downhill. Overall, we conclude that the analysis of the (15)N natural abundance in high-mountain ecosystems is a purposeful tool for detecting land-use- or climate change-induced soil degradation and N-cycle opening.