Regularly flooded rice paddies usually show greater soil organic C and microbial-derived C contents than adjacent upland counterparts, but the soil microbial physiological traits under these two different land uses spanning regions remain unclear. Here, we collected 40 pairs of adjacent paddy and upland soils from four different climates (mid temperate, warm temperate, subtropics, and tropics) across eastern China to determine the microbial growth, respiration, and C use efficiency using the 18O-H2O incubation method. Upland soils from warmer climates exhibited lower microbial growth but highe...
