Concurrent and lagged impacts of an anomalously warm year on autotrophic and heterotrophic components of soil respiration: A deconvolution analysis

Summary: •Partitioning soil respiration into autotrophic (R_A) and heterotrophic (R_H) components is critical for understanding their differential responses to climate warming.•Here, we used a deconvolution analysis to partition soil respiration in a pulse warming experiment. We first conducted a sensitivity analysis to determine which parameters can be identified by soil respiration data. A Markov chain Monte Carlo technique was then used to optimize those identifiable parameters in a terrestrial ecosystem model. Finally, the optimized parameters were employed to quantify R_A and R_H in a forward analysis.•Our results displayed that more than one-half of parameters were constrained by daily soil respiration data. The optimized model simulation showed that warming stimulated R_H and had little effect on R_A in the first 2 months, but decreased both R_H and R_A during the remainder of the treatment and post-treatment years. Clipping of above-ground biomass stimulated the warming effect on R_H but not on R_A. Overall, warming decreased R_A and R_H significantly, by 28.9% and 24.9%, respectively, during the treatment year and by 27.3% and 33.3%, respectively, during the post-treatment year, largely as a result of decreased canopy greenness and biomass.•Lagged effects of climate anomalies on soil respiration and its components are important in assessing terrestrial carbon cycle feedbacks to climate warming.