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Grassland abandonment followed by forest succession is the dominant land-use change in the European Alps. We studied the impact of current forest expansion on mountain grassland on changes in physical soil organic carbon (SOC) fractions along a land-use and management gradient, focusing on changes in aggregate stability and particulate organic matter (POM). Four successional stages were investigated: managed grassland, two transitional phases in which grassland abandonment led to colonization by Picea abies (L.) Karst., and old mixed forest dominated by Fagus sylvatica L. and P. abies. Soil samples collected from the mineral soil (0–5 cm, 5–10 cm, 10–20 cm) were fractionated following two procedures: 1) aggregate size fractionation, separating aggregates based on their dimension, and 2) size-density fractionation, separating stable aggregates from non-occluded POM. The dimension of aggregates assessed by aggregate size fractionation tended to increase, whereas SOC allocation to stable aggregates assessed by size-density fractionation decreased following conversion of grassland to forest (e.g. from 81 to 59 % in the 0–5 cm layer). The amount of SOC stored in POM increased by 3.8 Mg ha−1 in the integrated 0–20 cm layer from managed grassland to old forest. The combination of two physical SOC fractionation procedures revealed that natural forest succession on abandoned grasslands led to a decline in physical SOC stability in the mineral soil, suggesting that SOC can become more susceptible to management and environmental change.

The partitioning of the total soil CO2 efflux into its two main components: respiration from roots (and root-associated organisms) and microbial respiration (by means of soil organic matter (SOM) and litter decomposition), is a major need in soil carbon dynamics studies in order to understand if a soil is a net sink or source of carbon. The heterotrophic component of the CO2 efflux was estimated for 11 forest sites as the ratio between the carbon stocks of different SOM pools and previously published (Δ14C derived) turnover times. The autotrophic component, including root and root-associated respiration, was calculated by subtracting the heterotrophic component from total soil chamber measured CO2 efflux. Results suggested that, on average, 50.4 % of total soil CO2 efflux was derived from the respiration of the living roots, 42.4 % from decomposition of the litter layers and less than 10 % from decomposition of belowground SOM. The Δ14C method proved to be an efficient tool by which to partition soil CO2 efflux and quantify the contribution of the different components of soil respiration. However the average calculated heterotrophic respiration was statistically lower compared with two previous studies dealing with soil CO2 efflux partitioning (one performed in the same study area; the other a meta-analysis of soil respiration partitioning). These differences were probably due to the heterogeneity of the SOM fraction and to a sub-optimal choice of the litter sampling period.

A simple estimation of heterotrophic respiration can be obtained analytically as the y-intercept of the linear regression between soil-surface CO2 efflux and root biomass. In the present study, a development of this indirect methodology is presented by taking into consideration both the temporal variation and the spatial heterogeneity of heterotrophic respiration. For this purpose, soil CO2 efflux, soil carbon content and main stand characteristics were estimated in seven evergreen forest ecosystems along an elevation gradient ranging from 250 to 1740 m. For each site and for each sampling date the measured soil CO2 efflux (R S) was predicted with the model R S = a × S C + b × R D ± e, where S C is soil carbon content per unit area to a depth of 30 cm and R D is the root density of the 2–5 mm root class. Regressions with statistically significant a and b coefficients allowed the indirect separation of the two components of soil CO2 efflux. Considering that the different sampling dates were characterized by different soil temperature, it was possible to investigate the temporal and thermal dependency of autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration. It was estimated that annual autotrophic respiration accounts for 16–58% of total soil CO2 efflux in the seven different evergreen ecosystems. In addition, our observations show a decrease of annual autotrophic respiration at increasing availability of soil nitrogen.