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Abstract
In the accompanying Comment1, He et al. argue that the determinant role of microbial carbon use efficiency in global soil organic carbon (SOC) storage shown in Tao et al. (2023)2 was overestimated because carbon inputs were neglected in our data analysis while they suggest that our model-based analysis could be biased and model-dependent. Their argument is based on a different choice of independent variables in the data analysis and a sensitivity analysis of two process-based models other than that used in our study. We agree that both carbon inputs and outputs (as mediated by microbial processes) matter when predicting SOC storage – the question is their relative contributions. While we encourage further studies to examine how the evaluation of the relative importance of CUE to global SOC storage may vary with different model structures, He et al.’s claims about Tao et al. (2023) need to be taken as an alternative, unproven hypothesis until empirical data support their specific parameterization. Here we show that an additional literature assessment of global data does not support He et al.’s argument, in contrast to our study, and that further study on this topic is essential.
Department
Soil Biogeochemistry and Microbial Ecology
Publication Date
8-29-2023
Publisher
bioRxiv
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Feng Tao, Benjamin Z. Houlton, Serita D. Frey, Johannes Lehmann, Stefano Manzoni, Yuanyuan Huang, Lifen Jiang, Umakant Mishra, Bruce A. Hungate, Michael W. I. Schmidt, Markus Reichstein, Nuno Carvalhais, Philippe Ciais, Ying-Ping Wang, Bernhard Ahrens, Gustaf Hugelius, Toby D. Hocking, Xingjie Lu, Zheng Shi, Kostiantyn Viatkin, Ronald Vargas, Yusuf Yigini, Christian Omuto, Ashish A. Malik, Guillermo Peralta, Rosa Cuevas-Corona, Luciano E. Di Paolo, Isabel Luotto, Cuijuan Liao, Yi-Shuang Liang, Vinisa S. Saynes, Xiaomeng Huang, Yiqi Luo. Reply to: Contribution of carbon inputs to soil carbon accumulation cannot be neglected, bioRxiv 2023.08.20.552557; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.20.552557
Comments
This is a preprint posted to bioRxiv, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.20.552557