Influence of Rainfall on Soil Respiration in Karst Urban Green Space

Rainfall is one of the key factors that control soil respiration.Furthermore,studying the relationship between soil respiration and rainfall is an important way to forecast and evaluate the variation of soil respiration in a terrestrial ecosystem.Up to date,the influence of natural rainfall on soil is still limited.To investigate the influence of rainfall on soil respiration,we investigated soil respiration using a closed chamber during 24 hours after the natural rainfall in karst urban green space in Guiyang city,Guizhou Province.Our results showed that the soil respiration rate varied with rainfall intensity.The main reason is that the low intensity of rainfall was favorable for microbial respiration.However,the high intensity of rainfall restrained the microbial activity.A significantly positive correlation between the root respiration rate and the intensity of rainfall was found.An interesting outcome of this study was that different responses were found for the root respiration and microbial respiration on environmental factors.There is significantly negative correlation between temperature and root respiration;while there is a significantly positive correlation between soil water content and microbial respiration.