Soil resource availability impacts microbial response to organic carbon and inorganic nitrogen inputs

Impacts of newly added organic carbon(C) and inorganic nitrogen (N) on the microbial utilization of soil organic matter are important in determining the future C balance of terrestrial ecosystems. We examined microbial responses to cellulose and ammonium nitrate additions in three soils with very different C and N availability. These soils included an organic soil (14.2% total organic C, with extremely high extractable N and low labile C), a forest soil (4.7% total organic C, with high labile C and extremely low extractable N), and a grassland soil (1.6% total organic C, with low extractable N and labile C). While cellulose addition alone significantly enhanced microbial respiration and biomass C and N in the organic and grassland soils, it accelerated only the microbial respiration in the highly-N limited forest soil. These results indicated that when N was not limited, C addition enhanced soil respiration by stimulating both microbial growth and their metabolic activity. New C inputs lead to elevated C release in all three soils, and the magnitude of the enhancement was higher in the organic and grassland soils than the forest soil. The addition of cellulose plus N to the forest and grassland soils initially increased the microbial biomass and respiration rates, but decreased the rates as time progressed. Compared to cellulose addition alone, cellulose plus N additions increased the total C-released in the grassland soil, but not in the forest soil. The enhancement of total C-released induced by C and N addition was less than 50% of the added-C in the forest soil after 96 d of incubation, in contrast to 87.5% and 89.0% in the organic and grassland soils. These results indicate that indigenous soil C and N availability substantially impacts the allocation of organic C for microbial biomass growth and/or respiration, potentially regulating the turnover rates of the new organic C inputs.