Simulating long-term responses of soil organic matter turnover to substrate stoichiometry by abstracting fast and small-scale microbial processes : the Soil Enzyme Steady Allocation Model (SESAM; v3.0)
(2022) In Geoscientific Model Development 15(22). p.8377-8393- Abstract
Understanding the coupling of nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) cycles of land ecosystems requires understanding microbial element use efficiencies of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition. Whereas important controls of those efficiencies by microbial community adaptations have been shown at the scale of a soil pore, a simplified representation of those controls is needed at the ecosystem scale. However, without abstracting from the many details, models are not identifiable; i.e. they cannot be fitted without ambiguities to observations. There is a need to find, implement, and validate abstract simplified formulations of theses processes. Therefore, we developed the Soil Enzyme Allocation Model (SEAM). The model explicitly represents... (More)
Understanding the coupling of nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) cycles of land ecosystems requires understanding microbial element use efficiencies of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition. Whereas important controls of those efficiencies by microbial community adaptations have been shown at the scale of a soil pore, a simplified representation of those controls is needed at the ecosystem scale. However, without abstracting from the many details, models are not identifiable; i.e. they cannot be fitted without ambiguities to observations. There is a need to find, implement, and validate abstract simplified formulations of theses processes. Therefore, we developed the Soil Enzyme Allocation Model (SEAM). The model explicitly represents community adaptation strategies of resource allocation to extracellular enzymes and enzyme limitations on SOM decomposition. They thus provide an abstraction from several microbial functional groups to a single holistic microbial community. Here we further simplify SEAM using a quasi-steady-state assumption for extracellular enzyme pools to derive the Soil Enzyme Steady Allocation Model (SESAM) and test whether SESAM can provide the same decadal-term predictions as SEAM. SESAM reproduced the priming effect, the SOM banking mechanism, and the damping of fluctuations in carbon use efficiency with microbial competition as predicted by SEAM and other more detailed models. This development is an important step towards a more parsimonious representation of soil microbial effects in global land surface models.
(Less)
- author
- Wutzler, Thomas ; Yu, Lin LU ; Schrumpf, Marion and Zaehle, Sönke
- organization
- publishing date
- 2022-11-18
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Geoscientific Model Development
- volume
- 15
- issue
- 22
- pages
- 17 pages
- publisher
- Copernicus GmbH
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85143408167
- ISSN
- 1991-959X
- DOI
- 10.5194/gmd-15-8377-2022
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- eae1c72c-9e4a-44f6-8fcf-c746ab99a32c
- date added to LUP
- 2022-12-23 10:30:47
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 13:53:41
@article{eae1c72c-9e4a-44f6-8fcf-c746ab99a32c,
abstract = {{<p>Understanding the coupling of nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) cycles of land ecosystems requires understanding microbial element use efficiencies of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition. Whereas important controls of those efficiencies by microbial community adaptations have been shown at the scale of a soil pore, a simplified representation of those controls is needed at the ecosystem scale. However, without abstracting from the many details, models are not identifiable; i.e. they cannot be fitted without ambiguities to observations. There is a need to find, implement, and validate abstract simplified formulations of theses processes. Therefore, we developed the Soil Enzyme Allocation Model (SEAM). The model explicitly represents community adaptation strategies of resource allocation to extracellular enzymes and enzyme limitations on SOM decomposition. They thus provide an abstraction from several microbial functional groups to a single holistic microbial community. Here we further simplify SEAM using a quasi-steady-state assumption for extracellular enzyme pools to derive the Soil Enzyme Steady Allocation Model (SESAM) and test whether SESAM can provide the same decadal-term predictions as SEAM. SESAM reproduced the priming effect, the SOM banking mechanism, and the damping of fluctuations in carbon use efficiency with microbial competition as predicted by SEAM and other more detailed models. This development is an important step towards a more parsimonious representation of soil microbial effects in global land surface models.</p>}},
author = {{Wutzler, Thomas and Yu, Lin and Schrumpf, Marion and Zaehle, Sönke}},
issn = {{1991-959X}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{11}},
number = {{22}},
pages = {{8377--8393}},
publisher = {{Copernicus GmbH}},
series = {{Geoscientific Model Development}},
title = {{Simulating long-term responses of soil organic matter turnover to substrate stoichiometry by abstracting fast and small-scale microbial processes : the Soil Enzyme Steady Allocation Model (SESAM; v3.0)}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-8377-2022}},
doi = {{10.5194/gmd-15-8377-2022}},
volume = {{15}},
year = {{2022}},
}