Short-term warming increased soil heterotrophic respiration due to enhanced active microbial community

Here, we investigate the role of active microbial community in regulating Rh responses to 3 years of 3.9 deg C warming based on soil translocation experiment (from 2200 to 1300 m asl) in Qinling forest soil. Eight soil cores were reinstalled in situ (hereafter referred to as "Control") and the other eight were relocated to the low elevation (hereafter referred to as "Warm"), a warming process by soil translocation. We used the 16S rRNA gene to amplify the V3-V4 region sequences to generalize the abundance of bacterial hosts. Our study suggested that warming increased Rh through altering active microbial community diversity, species composition, and C degradation functional genes.