Patterns of longer-term climate change effects on CO<sub>2</sub> efflux from biocrusted soils differ from those observed in the short term

Darrouzet-Nardi, Anthony; Reed, Sasha C.; Grote, Edmund E.; Belnap, Jayne

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4561-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 14

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4561-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4561-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 14

Research article

|

26 Jul 2018

Research article |

| 26 Jul 2018

Patterns of longer-term climate change effects on CO₂ efflux from biocrusted soils differ from those observed in the short term

Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi, Sasha C. Reed, Edmund E. Grote, and Jayne Belnap

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Final revised paper (published on 26 Jul 2018)
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Preprint (discussion started on 11 Jan 2018)
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Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Coments to Patterns of longer-term climate change effects on CO2 efflux from biocrusted soils differ from those observed in the short-term', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Mar 2018
- AC1: 'Response to referee #1', Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi, 11 Apr 2018
RC2: 'Comments to bg-2017-543', Anonymous Referee #2, 26 Mar 2018
- AC2: 'Response to referee #2', Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi, 11 Apr 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (12 Apr 2018) by Paul Stoy

AR by Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi on behalf of the Authors (24 May 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Jun 2018) by Paul Stoy

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (17 Jun 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (19 Jun 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Comments to bg-2017-543 2nd review

Dears Editor and authors,

The authors have improved the manuscript substantially; I would like to highlight main achievements and also some points that are still unclear to me:

ACHIEVEMENTS: Authors have included full climatic record that helps to understand the trends in the research areas in the last years. They have included biocrust coverage information comparing beginning and end of the period linked to the experiment, as well as differences within treatments over time (please check later unclear points section about this). At the same time they have clarified the stats section and improved the discussion by developing a ideas related with the nature of the fluxes measured and opening gates to future research that could be designed to asses reponsabilities to each of the likely components. The main strengths of this research are, under my point of view, (i) The quantification of the long term C soil fluxes in drylands in a big scale and (ii) The detection of different patterns in the response to climate manipulations when comparing short and long term (that seems to be supported by the literature)

STILL UNCLEAR:One criticisms that I would make to the rebuttal is the fact of not stating clearly in the response letter in which line of the new manuscript are the changes related with each of the referee´s queries. These would facilitate referee´s work , speed up the review process and provides clarity.

Besides this comment, I think that authors should clarify more in the stats section of the methodology when comparisons are significant and when not (I mean, the fact of the interval including the 0 having a statistical meaning). Some readers may not be used to the statistical approach made. Besides, please explain what is exactly the block as random effect in the mixed effects linear model.

I think that table S2 could be improved, information provided there is quite interesting and I see it unclear. For example, the table is named as “differences within treatments over time”, but I do not see clear what is being compared and which the time lapse of the comparison is. Please include this information in the figure legend, which should make the figure independent.

Please provide sources for new data included in the discussion (Ls 672-676)

New figure 1 is quite informative and a good improvement, but one question arises which I think that can be of interest and could be worthy to be considered in the discussion. Looking at the results of the controls, it seems that there is a natural pattern of involution in the biocrust succession (going towards a higher cyano cover) between 2005-2017. This is especially striking in lichens, with treatments and controls showing no differences between them. Any idea or input about these patterns and the possible links with C fluxes?

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (19 Jun 2018) by Paul Stoy

AR by Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi on behalf of the Authors (16 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (17 Jul 2018) by Paul Stoy

AR by Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi on behalf of the Authors (17 Jul 2018)

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Short summary

Biocrusts are photosynthetic communities on the surface of many desert soils. We investigated the response of biocrusts and the soil beneath them (including plant roots) to 9 years of simulated warming and changing precipitation patterns. We monitored the exchange of carbon between soil and atmosphere using automated chambers. As plants and biocrusts responded negatively to the treatments, we saw reduced photosynthesis in biocrusts but variable overall carbon exchange over 9 years.

Patterns of longer-term climate change effects on CO2 efflux from biocrusted soils differ from those observed in the short term

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Patterns of longer-term climate change effects on CO₂ efflux from biocrusted soils differ from those observed in the short term