Abstract
Soil CO2 efflux (Esoil), the main pathway of C movement from the biosphere to the atmosphere, is critical to the terrestrial C cycle but how precipitation and soil moisture influence Esoil remains poorly understood. Here, we irrigated a longleaf pine wiregrass savanna for six years; this increased soil moisture by 41.2%. We tested how an altered precipitation regime affected total belowground carbon allocation (TBCA), root growth, soil carbon, and Esoil. We used two methods to quantify Esoil: daytime biweekly manual measurements and automated continuous measurements for one year. We hypothesized that the low-frequency manual method would miss both short- and long-term (i.e., subdaily to annual, respectively) effects of soil moisture on Esoil while the high-frequency data from the automated method would allow the effects of soil moisture to be discerned. Root growth was significantly higher in irrigated plots, particularly at 0–20 cm depth. Irrigated annual Esoil was significantly greater than that of the control when estimated with the continuous measurements but not when estimated from biweekly measurements. The difference in annual Esoil estimates is likely due to (1) the delayed increase in Esoil following irrigation pulses of soil moisture (i.e., variation that the biweekly manual measurements missed) and (2) the diel timing of biweekly manual measurements (they were completed early to mid-day before peak efflux). With irrigation, estimates of TBCA increased almost two-fold with automated measurements but only 36% with intermittent measurements. Relative to controls, irrigated treatments stored almost 2 Mg C ha−1 year−1 more in soils and 0.26 Mg C ha−1 year−1 more in roots. High-frequency measurements of Esoil were essential to estimate total belowground carbon allocation. With irrigation, soil carbon pools were not at steady-state, so shifts in soil carbon storage must be considered in TBCA estimates.