Soil respiration in a successional tropical forest in Thailand

Soil respiration (SR) in forests contributes significant emissions of carbon from terrestrial ecosystems into the atmosphere. Soil respiration is highly sensitive to environmental changes because it is affected by many factors, including soil temperature, soil moisture, microbial community, surface litter and vegetation type. Indeed, a small change in SR may have large impacts on the global carbon balance, further influencing feedbacks to climate change. Thus, detailed characterization of SR responses to changes in environmental conditions is needed to accurately estimate carbon dioxide emissions from forest ecosystems. However, data for such analyses are still limited, especially in tropical forests of Southeast Asia where various stages of forest succession exist due to previous land-use changes. In this preliminary study, we measured SR and some environmental factors including soil temperature (ST), soil moisture (SM) and organic matter content (OM) in three successional tropical for...