Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PT, UK.
School of Biological Sciences and Institute for Global Food Security, Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast BT9 5DL, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2020 Mar 16;375(1794):20190112. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0112. Epub 2020 Jan 27.
A major challenge for advancing our understanding of the functional role of soil microbial communities is to link changes in their structure and function under climate change. To address this challenge requires new understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the capacity of soil microbial communities to resist and recover from climate extremes. Here, we synthesize emerging understanding of the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence the resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities to climate extremes, with a focus on drought, and identify drivers that might trigger abrupt changes to alternative states. We highlight research challenges and propose a path for advancing our understanding of the resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities to climate extremes, and of their vulnerability to transitions to alternative states, including the use of trait-based approaches. We identify a need for new approaches to quantify resistance and resilience of soil microbial communities, and to identify thresholds for transitions to alternative states. We show how high-resolution time series coupled with gradient designs will enable detecting response patterns to interacting drivers. Finally, to account for extrinsic factors, we suggest that future studies should use environmental gradients to track soil microbial community responses to climate extremes in space and time. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions'.
推进我们对土壤微生物群落功能作用理解的一个主要挑战是要在气候变化的背景下，联系其结构和功能的变化。应对这一挑战需要新的认识，即土壤微生物群落抵御和从气候极端事件中恢复的能力的潜在机制。在这里，我们综合了新兴的关于影响土壤微生物群落对气候极端事件的抵抗力和恢复力的内在和外在因素的理解，重点关注干旱，并确定可能引发向替代状态的突然变化的驱动因素。我们强调了研究挑战，并提出了一个推进我们对土壤微生物群落对气候极端事件的抵抗力和恢复力及其向替代状态脆弱性的理解的途径，包括使用基于特征的方法。我们确定需要新的方法来量化土壤微生物群落的抵抗力和恢复力，并确定向替代状态转变的阈值。我们展示了如何使用高分辨率时间序列和梯度设计相结合的方法来检测对相互作用的驱动因素的响应模式。最后，为了考虑外在因素，我们建议未来的研究应该使用环境梯度来跟踪土壤微生物群落对气候变化的响应在时间和空间上的变化。本文是主题为“气候变化与生态系统：威胁、机遇与解决方案”的特刊的一部分。
