Global implications of a low soil moisture threshold for microbial hydrogen uptake

The impact of increasing anthropogenic hydrogen (H2) emissions on Earth’s radiative balance depends on the soil microbial H2 sink—the largest and most uncertain term in the global H2 budget. Soil moisture is a primary but poorly quantified control regulating the soil sink. Here, we assess the sensitivity of microbial H2 oxidation to soil moisture in laboratory experiments with temperate and arid soils spanning distinct textures. We report H2 oxidizer activity down to –70 to –100 MPa water potentials across soils, which are among the driest conditions reported for microbial activity and are much drier than assumed in global simulations of H2. Using genome-resolved meta-omics, we link H2 oxidation dynamics in temperate soils to specific desiccation-adapted microbial taxa that contribute differentially to H2 uptake along the moisture gradient. Through global simulations, we show that our observationally constrained drier moisture threshold increases the contribution of arid and semi-arid regions for soil H2 uptake by 4-7 percentage points (pp), while decreasing the contribution of temperate and continental regions (−7 pp). Our results highlight the importance of H2 uptake under extreme hydrological conditions, particularly the roles of desertification, dryland expansion, and H2-oxidizer ecophysiology in modulating long-term changes in H2 uptake.