Climate warming weakens the negative effect of nitrogen addition on the microbial contribution to soil carbon pool in an alpine meadow

• Cold environment suppressed the accumulation of microbial-derived C in the soil. • Warming increased microbial residues in the soil, but N addition decreased it. • Warming weakened the N-driven negative effect on soil C stability. Microbial-derived soil organic carbon has attracted increased attention as an important source of soil organic matter that may affect soil carbon persistence. Ecosystems at high elevation and latitude contain massive amounts of soil organic carbon that is potentially vulnerable to rapid climate change. However, little is known about the mechanisms that govern the production and accumulation of carbon derived from microbes in the context of global changes for these regions. Here, we investigate soil biomarkers from membrane lipids and microbial residues in an experiment with six-year warming and nitrogen (N) addition treatments in an alpine meadow of the Tibetan Plateau. The results showed low accumulation of amino sugars in soil (167.51 to 297.36 μg·g −1 ) for this alpine meadow. After the six-year manipulative experiment, warming promoted accumulation of microbial-derived carbon in soil with both increased bacterial (increased by 53.56%) and fungal carbon (increased by 25.60%). Nitrogen addition inhibited microbial-derived carbon accumulation (decreased by 25.37%) and significantly decreased the fungal carbon content relative to bacterial carbon content. Climate warming tended to weaken this N-driven negative effect. As microbial residues relate closely with soil organic matter stability, these results highlight the potential of global change factors (warming and N addition) to alter the structure and persistence of soil organic matter, with important implications in refining carbon cycle-climate models.