Biogeosciences www.biogeosciences.net 1726-4170 1726-4189 2 4 2005 10.5194/bg-2-317-2005 http://www.biogeosciences.net/2/317/2005/ http://www.biogeosciences.net/2/317/2005/bg-2-317-2005.html http://www.biogeosciences.net/2/317/2005/bg-2-317-2005.pdf 317 321 2005-11-11 Temperature sensitivity of decomposition in relation to soil organic matter pools: critique and outlook M. Reichstein T. Kätterer O. Andrén P. Ciais E.-D. Schulze W. Cramer D. Papale R. Valentini Laboratory of Forest Ecology, Universitá della Tuscia, 01 100 Viterbo, Italy Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Telegrafenberg C4, 14 473 Potsdam, Germany Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition, SLU, Department of Soil Sciences, P.O. Box 7014, 75 007 Uppsala, Sweden Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE, 91 191, Gif sur Yvette, France Max-Planck Institut für Biogeochemie, P.O. Box 100164, 07 701 Jena, Germany Knorr et al. (2005) concluded that soil organic carbon pools with longer turnover times are more sensitive to temperature. We show that this conclusion is equivocal, largely dependent on their specific selection of data and does not persist when the data set of Kätterer et al. (1998) is analysed in a more appropriate way. Further, we analyse how statistical properties of the model parameters may interfere with correlative analyses that relate the Q₁₀ of soil respiration with the basal rate, where the latter is taken as a proxy for soil organic matter quality. We demonstrate that negative parameter correlations between Q₁₀-values and base respiration rates are statistically expected and not necessarily provide evidence for a higher temperature sensitivity of low quality soil organic matter. Consequently, we propose it is premature to conclude that stable soil carbon is more sensitive to temperature than labile carbon.