Determination of carbon and nitrogen in microbial biomass of southern-Taiga soils by different methods

The results of methods for determining microbial biomass carbon vary in reproducibility among soils. The fumigation-extraction and substrate-induced respiration methods give similar results for Albic Luvisol and Gleyic Fluvisol, while the results of the rehydration method are reliably higher. In Histic Fluvisol, relatively similar results are obtained using the fumigation-extraction and rehydration methods, and the substrate-induced respiration method gives almost halved results. The seasonal dynamics of microbial biomass carbon also varies depending on the method used. The highest difference is typical for the warm period, when the concentrations found by the extraction and substrate-induced methods poorly agree between two out of three soils studied. The concentration of microbial biomass nitrogen is less sensitive to the analytical method: the differences between the results of the fumigation-extraction and rehydration methods are statistically insignificant in the all soils. To reveal stable relationships between the results of determining microbial carbon and the soil properties and analytical method, a large diversity of soils should be studied. This will allow for proposing of conversion factors for the recalculation of the obtained values to the concentrations of carbon and nitrogen in microbial biomass for different soils (or soil groups) and, hence, the more correct comparison of the results obtained by different methods.