The DOI matches its Crossref record; 81 of the 81 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Fast-decaying plant litter enhances soil carbon in temperate forests but not through microbial physiological traits
Open accessAbstract
Conceptual and empirical advances in soil biogeochemistry have challenged long-held assumptions about the role of soil micro-organisms in soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics; yet, rigorous tests of emerging concepts remain sparse. Recent hypotheses suggest that microbial necromass production links plant inputs to SOC accumulation, with high-quality (i.e., rapidly decomposing) plant litter promoting microbial carbon use efficiency, growth, and turnover leading to more mineral stabilization of necromass. We test this hypothesis experimentally and with observations across six eastern US forests, using stable isotopes to measure microbial traits and SOC dynamics. Here we show, in both studies, that microbial growth, efficiency, and turnover are negatively (not positively) related to mineral-associated SOC. In the experiment, stimulation of microbial growth by high-quality litter enhances SOC decomposition, offsetting the positive effect of litter quality on SOC stabilization. We suggest that microbial necromass production is not the primary driver of SOC persistence in temperate forests. Factors such as microbial necromass origin, alternative SOC formation pathways, priming effects, and soil abiotic properties can strongly decouple microbial growth, efficiency, and turnover from mineral-associated SOC.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
lavaan : An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling
Rosseel, Y. (2012) · Journal of Statistical Software · doi:10.18637/jss.v048.i02 · Cited by 27,955
An extraction method for measuring soil microbial biomass C
Vance, E. D., Brookes, P. C., & Jenkinson, D. S. (1987) · Soil Biology and Biochemistry · doi:10.1016/0038-0717(87)90052-6 · Cited by 12,887
Soil Carbon Sequestration Impacts on Global Climate Change and Food Security
Lal, R. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1097396 · Cited by 8,376
Cotrufo, M. F., Wallenstein, M. D., Boot, C. M., Denef, K., & Paul, E. (2013) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1111/gcb.12113 · Cited by 3,552
The importance of anabolism in microbial control over soil carbon storage
Liang, C., Schimel, J. P., & Jastrow, J. D. (2017) · Nature Microbiology · doi:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2017.105 · Cited by 3,320
Self-citationParticulate Soil Organic‐Matter Changes across a Grassland Cultivation Sequence
Cambardella, C. A., & Elliott, E. T. (1992) · Soil Science Society of America Journal · doi:10.2136/sssaj1992.03615995005600030017x · Cited by 3,044
Simple means to improve the interpretability of regression coefficients
Schielzeth, H. (2010) · Methods in Ecology and Evolution · doi:10.1111/j.2041-210x.2010.00012.x · Cited by 3,027
Lavallee, J. M., Soong, J. L., & Cotrufo, M. F. (2020) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1111/gcb.14859 · Cited by 2,477
Bacterial and fungal contributions to carbon sequestration in agroecosystems
Six, J., Frey, S. D., Thiet, R. K., & Batten, K. M. (2006) · Soil Science Society of America Journal · doi:10.2136/sssaj2004.0347 · Cited by 2,176
Self-citationFormation of soil organic matter via biochemical and physical pathways of litter mass loss
Cotrufo, M. F., Soong, J. L., Horton, A. J., Campbell, E. E., Haddix, M. L., Wall, D. H., & Parton, W. J. (2015) · Nature Geoscience · doi:10.1038/ngeo2520 · Cited by 1,874
Cited by
Whalen, E. D., Grandy, A. S., Sokol, N. W., Keiluweit, M., Ernakovich, J., Smith, R. G., & Frey, S. D. (2022) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1111/gcb.16413 · Cited by 401
Self-citationRaza, T., Qadir, M. F., Khan, K. S., Eash, N. S., Yousuf, M., Chatterjee, S., Manzoor, R., Rehman, S. U., & Oetting, J. N. (2023) · Journal of Environmental Management · doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118529 · Cited by 293
Hansen, P. M., Even, R., King, A. E., Lavallee, J., Schipanski, M., & Cotrufo, M. F. (2024) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1111/gcb.17080 · Cited by 150
Metadata
- Authors
- Craig, M. E., Geyer, K. M., Beidler, K. V., Brzostek, E. R., Frey, S. D., Stuart Grandy, A., Liang, C., & Phillips, R. P.
- Venue
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2022-03-09
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1229-1229
- ISSN
- 2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4221041604
- Cited by
- 339
- References
- 81
- FWCI
- 35.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Fast-decaying plant litter enhances soil carbon in temperate forests but not through microbial physiological traits. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41467-022-28715-9
- The paper
- Craig, M. E., Geyer, K. M., Beidler, K. V., Brzostek, E. R., Frey, S. D., Stuart Grandy, A., Liang, C., & Phillips, R. P. (2022). Fast-decaying plant litter enhances soil carbon in temperate forests but not through microbial physiological traits. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28715-9
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
