Publications by authors named "A Petraglia"
Empirical studies worldwide show that warming has variable effects on plant litter decomposition, leaving the overall impact of climate change on decomposition uncertain. We conducted a meta-analysis of 109 experimental warming studies across seven continents, using natural and standardised plant material, to assess the overarching effect of warming on litter decomposition and identify potential moderating factors. We determined that at least 5.
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- Drought events are becoming more common in grasslands and shrublands, affecting soil organic carbon (SOC), which includes different forms like particulate (POC) and mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC).
- A global study over 19 sites revealed that in wetter areas (aridity index > 0.65), extreme drought led to a significant decrease in SOC (7.9%) and POC (15.9%), but MAOC levels remained unchanged.
- In drier regions (aridity index < 0.65), drought did not significantly affect any type of soil organic carbon, indicating that the impact of drought on SOC is influenced by environmental aridity and rainfall variability.
The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArctic and alpine tundra ecosystems are large reservoirs of organic carbon. Climate warming may stimulate ecosystem respiration and release carbon into the atmosphere. The magnitude and persistency of this stimulation and the environmental mechanisms that drive its variation remain uncertain.
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