Responses of soil microbial community to global climate change: a review

Abstract:

Global climate change affects the processes and functions of terrestrial ecosystems where soil microbial community plays a crucial role in almost all of the biogeochemical cycles. Here, we reviewed the direct and indirect responses of soil microbial activities (e.g., soil respiration and enzyme activities) and community structure to individual and multiple global change factors, including elevated CO₂ concentration, warming, altered precipitation, and nitrogen deposition. Besides, we summarized the mechanisms for the adaptation of soil microbial community and the responses of functional microorganisms involved in soil carbon and nitrogen cycle to climate change. Generally, these global change factors may have positive, negative, or insignificant effects on soil microbial communities, and different functional microorganisms also showed different sensitivity to them. Moreover, the interactive effect of multiple global change factors on soil microbial community structure may be additive, synergistic, or antagonistic. However, there is a paucity of research on the combined effects of multiple global change factors, such as three, four, and even more factors. In addition, the distribution of the studied areas is uneven, and studies involving various ecosystems with large spatial and temporal scale are scarce. No comprehensive ecosystem model is available to simulate and predict the effects of global change on soil microbial communities. Finally, we summarized the research trends: (1) dynamic monitoring of soil microbial communities in multiple ecosystems in large spatial scale for a long time involving multiple global change factors, (2) the interaction of multiple global change factors, and (3) development of comprehensive ecosystem model to accurately estimate the impact of global climate change and factors’ interaction on soil microbial community. These will help to accurately predict the response of ecosystem, especially soil microbial ecosystems, under future global climate change scenarios, and lay a basis for the sustainable development of ecosystems.