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FACTORS AFFECTING THE SOIL MICROBIAL QUALITY MEASUREMENTS OF BIOMASS QUOTIENT AND RESPIRATION QUOTIENT
Author(s) -
Godley A. R.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
water and environment journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1747-6593
pISSN - 1747-6585
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-6593.2004.tb00500.x
Subject(s) - biomass (ecology) , respiratory quotient , environmental science , soil water , soil respiration , rhizosphere , population , quotient , respiration , agronomy , soil science , chemistry , biology , botany , mathematics , bacteria , biochemistry , genetics , demography , sociology , pure mathematics
The soil microbial biomass quotient (expressed as a percentage of the total soil organic carbon) and the specific rate of carbon‐dioxide production by soil microbes (respiration quotient) are often used as indicators of stress on soil microbial populations. A low biomass quotient or a high respiration quotient is considered to be an indication of stress from, for example, toxicity from metals in sewage sludge applied to soils. These metabolic quotients are affected by a wide variety of other factors such as the biodegradability of soil organic‐carbon amendments, plant inputs of organic carbon into soils, natural variations in microbial population sizes with depth, and in the rhizosphere of plants. These variations could be sufficiently large to make interpretation of changes in biomass quotient and respiration quotient, as a response to stress, problematical.