Soil organic matter changes under experimental pedoclimatic modifications in mountain grasslands of the French Alps

•A 3 °C warming inducted by soil transplantation led to a labile SOC loss after 3 years.•Remaining SOC was characterized by a more thermally resistant signature.•A weaker intensity warming by OTC had no measurable impact on SOC.•A 3 °C cooling inducted by transplantation led to a relative labile SOC enrichment. Mountain grasslands contain large stocks of soil organic carbon (SOC), of which a good part is in labile particulate form. This labile SOC may be protected by cold climate that limits microbial activity. Strong climate change in mountain regions threatens to destabilize these SOC stocks. However, so far the climate response of SOC stocks in mountain grasslands remains highly uncertain, under either warming or cooling conditions. To overcome this knowledge gap, we studied the effect of pedoclimatic regime changes on topsoil (0–10 cm) SOC in two complementary experiments: 3 °C of warming or cooling by reciprocal transplanting to an alpine (2450 m a.s.l.) and a subalpine (1950 m a.s.l.) grassland and 1 °C of warming by open-top chambers in the same grasslands. Topsoil SOC stocks were higher at the alpine site than at the subalpine site, and the biogeochemical signature of the soil organic matter (SOM) also differed between the two study sites. SOM was O-enriched, H-depleted, and more thermally stable at the warmer subalpine site. After three years, abrupt warming by transplanting tended to decrease topsoil SOC content. The remaining SOC was characterized by a more thermostable signature. This result suggests the preferential depletion of labile SOC upon experimental topsoil warming. Cooling did not modify overall SOC content but uphill transplanted topsoils showed a more thermolabile biogeochemical signature. In contrast, open-top chamber warming of alpine and subalpine topsoils caused limited changes to SOC stocks and SOM biogeochemical signature, possibly because the induced pedoclimatic change was more limited and more gradual compared to the warming by transplantating which reduced the annual snow cover period by around 60 days and increased cumulative degree days by a factor of ten as compared to the OTC-induced warming. Gradual temperature changes may take longer to become effective than a shock transplant treatment. We conclude that SOC in mountain grassland topsoils can be highly reactive to climate shocks.