Modelling climate-substrate interactions in microbial SOC decomposition

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the largest terrestrial carbon pool, but it is still uncertain how it will respond to climate change. Especially the fate of SOC due to concurrent changes in soil temperature and moisture is uncertain. It is generally accepted that microbially driven SOC decomposition will increase with warming, provided that sufficient soil moisture, and hence enough C substrate, is available for microbial decomposition. We use a mechanistic, microbially explicit SOC decomposition model, the Jena Soil Model (JSM), and focus on the depolymerization of litter and microbial residues by microbes. These model processes are sensitive to temperature and soil moisture content and follow reverse Michaelis-Menten kinetics. Microbial decomposition rate V of the substrate [S] is limited by the microbial biomass [B]: V = V_max * [S] *  [B]/(kM_B + [B]). The maximum reaction velocity, V_max, is temperature sensitive and follows an Arrhenius function. Also, a positive correlation between temperature and kM_B-values of different enzymes has been empirically shown, with Q10 values ranging from 0.71-2.80 (Allison et al., 2018). Q10 kM_B-values for microbial depolymerization of microbial residues would be low compared to those of a (lignified) litter pool. An increase in kM_B leads to a lower reaction velocity (V) and V becomes less temperature sensitive at low substrate concentrations. In this work we focus on the following questions: “how do temperature and soil moisture changes affect modelled heterotrophic respiration through the Michaelis-Menten term? Is there a temperature compensation effect on modelled decomposition rate because of the counteracting temperature sensitivities of V_max and kM_B?” We model these interactions under a mean warming experiment (+3.5 °K) as well as three soil moisture experiments: constant soil moisture, a drought, and a wetting scenario.