Earth & Environmental Sciences

As two central issues of global climate change, the continuous increase of both atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and global temperature has profound effects on various terrestrial ecosystems. Microbial communities play pivotal roles in these ecosystems by responding to environmental changes through regulation of soil biogeochemical processes. However, little is known about the effect of elevated CO₂ (eCO₂) and global warming on soil microbial communities, especially in semiarid zones. We used a functional gene array (GeoChip 3.0) to measure the functional gene composition, structure, and metabolic potential of soil microbial communities under warming, eCO₂, and eCO₂ + warming conditions in a semiarid grassland. The results showed that the composition and structure of microbial communities was dramatically altered by multiple climate factors, including elevated CO₂ and increased temperature. Key functional genes, those involved in carbon (C) degradation and fixation, methane metabolism, nitrogen (N) fixation, denitrification and N mineralization, were all stimulated under eCO₂, while those genes involved in denitrification and ammonification were inhibited under warming alone. The interaction effects of eCO₂ and warming on soil functional processes were similar to eCO₂ alone, whereas some genes involved in recalcitrant C degradation showed no significant changes. In addition, canonical correspondence analysis and Mantel test results suggested that NO₃-N and moisture significantly correlated with variations in microbial functional genes. Overall, this study revealed the possible feedback of soil microbial communities to multiple climate change factors by the suppression of N cycling under warming, and enhancement of C and N cycling processes under either eCO₂ alone or in interaction with warming. These findings may enhance our understanding of semiarid grassland ecosystem responses to integrated factors of global climate change.