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Microbial dormancy under freeze–thaw cycling regulates alpine soil responses to warming

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Abstract

Microbial regulation of soil carbon cycling in cold ecosystems remains poorly constrained in Earth system models, largely due to limited observations and unresolved mechanisms. Here, we develop a freeze–thaw-enabled microbial-ecological model (MEND-FT) and integrate it with multi-year whole-soil warming experiments in an alpine meadow on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau to investigate warming effects on soil carbon dynamics from microbial physiology to ecosystem processes. This experiment-model framework reveals amplified warming impacts during non-growing seasons, an underexplored period, driven by reduced frozen depths ( − 43 cm), prolonged thaw duration ( + 38 days), and widespread microbial dormancy. MEND-FT reproduces observed minimal enzyme responses and resolves seasonal microbial activity shifts via dormancy regulation, mechanisms absent from previous analyses. We further refine microbial carbon use efficiency estimates to align with ecosystem-level benchmarks, showing slight but persistent declines under warming. Long-term simulations suggest that the modest soil carbon loss ( − 2.2%) co-occurs with increased microbial biomass and enhanced oxidase activity, consistent with freeze-thaw-induced microbial physiological regulation rather than substrate depletion alone. Together, these findings provide compelling evidence that microbial dormancy-resuscitation dynamics govern soil carbon responses to climate and environmental changes, offering a scalable and transferable mechanistic framework for improving predictions of soil carbon persistence and greenhouse gas emissions across diverse biomes.

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Data availability

All data used for our analyses are publicly available. The data of field experiments were obtained at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24921495.v2. Daily gross primary production (GPP) data were derived from ChinaFLUX at https://www.chinaflux.org/. The data that support the key findings of this study are openly available in Zenodo websites: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15350104.

Code availability

The MEND model code is available in GitHub at https://github.com/wanggangsheng/MEND-FreezeThaw.git.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC No. 42371032) and the Excellent Young Scientists Fund of NSFC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Water Resources Engineering and Management, and Institute for Water-Carbon Cycles and Carbon Neutrality, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Shanshan Qi, Gangsheng Wang, Shuhao Zhou, Daifeng Xiang, Zirui Mu, Wanyu Li & Zehao Lv

  2. State Key Laboratory for Vegetation Structure, Function and Construction (VegLab), Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, and College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Biao Zhu & Jin-Sheng He

  3. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Ecology and Resource Use of the Mongolian Plateau, Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory for Grassland Ecology, and School of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University, Huhhot, China

    Biao Zhu

  4. State Key Laboratory of Herbage Improvement and Grassland Agro-ecosystems, and College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Jin-Sheng He

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  1. Shanshan Qi
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  2. Gangsheng Wang
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Contributions

G.W. conceived the idea and modeling strategy. S.Q. and G.W. developed the model with contributions from S.Z., D.X., and W.L. Z.M. and Z.L. contributed to data visualization and figure preparation. G.W., B.Z., and J.-S.H. discussed the design, experimental data and modeling results. The paper was written by S.Q. and G.W. with input from all coauthors. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to
Gangsheng Wang.

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Communications Earth and Environment thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Guopeng Liang, Mengjie Wang. A peer review file is available.

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Qi, S., Wang, G., Zhou, S. et al. Microbial dormancy under freeze–thaw cycling regulates alpine soil responses to warming.
Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03451-w

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