Decadal extreme drought reduces alpine subsoil carbon stocks

作者：Ronglei Zhou, Jinsong Wang, Quancheng Wang, Ning Liu, Chenglong Ye, Jingjing Shi, Mei Liu, Zhangwei Gao, Houkun Chu, Zhenrui Zhang, Bin Niu, Song Wang, Ruiyang Zhang, Dashuan Tian, Shuli Niu · 发表于：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1073/pnas.2517468123 · 被引用次数：5 · 研究领域：Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics、Soil erosion and sediment transport、Soil Geostatistics and Mapping

Grassland soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks are increasingly vulnerable to intensified drought. Yet, how long-term, especially extreme, drought affects these C reserves across soil profiles remains unresolved. Here, we present the response of SOC stocks at various depths (0 to 60 cm) using an experiment involving a 10-year drought gradient (P, 1/2 P, 1/4 P, and 1/12 P, where P is ambient precipitation) in an alpine grassland. We found that extreme drought (1/12 P) caused significant SOC losses in the subsoil, whereas mild to moderate droughts had no significant effects on SOC at any depth. Under extreme drought, SOC stocks declined by 27% in the 20 to 30 cm layer and by 37% in the 30 to 40 cm layer, while no significant changes were observed in the topsoil (0 to 20 cm) and the deeper layer (40 to 60 cm). Subsoil C losses were primarily driven by reductions in mineral-associated organic C (MAOC) rather than particulate organic C. Multiyear extreme drought disrupted soil-microbe-mineral interactions, as indicated by reductions in soil nitrogen availability, microbial biomass, carbon use efficiency, and mineral-binding agents. These changes collectively undermined the formation and stabilization of MAOC. Our findings suggest that prolonged extreme drought can weaken subsoil C storage and stability, highlighting the need to incorporate subsoil processes into Earth System Models to better predict soil C-climate feedback under future drought scenarios.