Living roots magnify the response of soil organic carbon decomposition to temperature in temperate grassland

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO(2)) concentration is both a strong driver of primary productivity and widely believed to be the principal cause of recent increases in global temperature. Soils are the largest store of the world's terrestrial C. Consequently, many investigations have attempted to mechanistically understand how microbial mineralisation of soil organic carbon (SOC) to CO(2) will be affected by projected increases in temperature. Most have attempted this in the absence of plants as the flux of CO(2) from root and rhizomicrobial respiration in intact plant-soil systems confounds interpretation of measurements. We compared the effect of a small increase in temperature on respiration from soils without recent plant C with the effect on intact grass swards. We found that for 48 weeks, before acclimation occurred, an experimental 3 °C increase in sward temperature gave rise to a 50% increase in below ground respiration (ca. 0.4 kg C m(−2); Q(10) = 3.5), whereas mineralisation of older SOC without plants increased with a Q(10) of only 1.7 when subject to increases in ambient soil temperature. Subsequent (14)C dating of respired CO(2) indicated that the presence of plants in swards more than doubled the effect of warming on the rate of mineralisation of SOC with an estimated mean C age of ca. 8 years or older relative to incubated soils without recent plant inputs. These results not only illustrate the formidable complexity of mechanisms controlling C fluxes in soils but also suggest that the dual biological and physical effects of CO(2) on primary productivity and global temperature have the potential to synergistically increase the mineralisation of existing soil C.