Soil nitrogen mineralization strongly affects N availability, thus impacting the primary productivity in ecosystems. The seasonal environmental changes affect soil mineralization in restored sandy grasslands such as a studied mobile dune (MD), a semi-fixed dune (SFD), a fixed dune (FD) and a grassland (G). During the growing season, we examined the association of soil N mineralization rate with vegetation characteristics, soil properties and climatic factors through the multivariate stepwise regression model. The vegetation cover, species diversity, above- and belowground biomass, soil carbon, nitrogen, soil water content (SWC), pH, electrical conductivity, very fine sand, clay and silt fractions increased during sandy grassland restoration. The NH4+-N concentration in MD and SFD was higher than that in FD and G, while NO3--N and inorganic N concentration showed a reverse trend. The NH4+N, NO3--N and inorganic N concentrations in MD, SFD and FD reached to the highest values in June, while in G they were highest in May. The net mineralization and nitrification rates increased with sandy grassland restoration; both of these rates were much greater in June than in other months at all sites. Regression analysis showed that the NO3--N concentration, SWC, pH of the soil and precipitation could explain 75% of the total variation in net nitrification rate, and the NO3--N concentration and precipitation could explain 59% of the total variation in the net mineralization rate. These results illustrate that the sandy grassland restoration can enhance the soil N availability, with soil N mineralization mainly determined by the changes of the NO3--N concentration and precipitation.
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The ongoing warming in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau leads to changes in ecosystem processes while the responses of soil and vegetation are not well understand. Thus, we used infrared radiators to carry out experimental warming from July 2010 to August 2011 in an alpine meadow on the Plateau (about 4630 m above sea level) to research the responses of environmental factors and vegetation characteristics to short-term warming (1 year). The experimental design was a block design consisting of five replications and included three treatment levels: control, T1 (130 W m-2) and T2 (150 W m-2). The results showed that air temperature at 20 cm height, surface temperature and soil temperature in the 0–100 cm layers increased with warming. The biggest differences of T1 (1.66°C) and T2 (2.34 °C) appeared on the surface and at 20 cm depth, whereas the biggest amplitudes of T1 (27.15%) and T2 (35.81%) all occurred at 100 cm depth. Soil moisture showed different trends with warming in different soil layers. In the 0–40 cm layers, soil moisture decreased with warming. The biggest differences (–2.97% for T1 and –2.73% for T2) and amplitudes (–18.07% for T1 and –16.64% for T2) all appeared at 10 cm depth. In the 60–100 cm layers, soil moisture increased with warming. The biggest differences (2.53% for T1 and 6.45% for T2) and amplitudes (11.39% for T1 and 29.05% for T2) all occurred at 100 cm depth. Relative to control, vegetation height and aboveground biomass increased significantly in T1 and T2 (P <0.05), while vegetation coverage had not significant differences in T1 and T2 (P> 0.05). In T1 and T2, the amplitudes were 30.67% and 30.19% for vegetation height, and 36.22% and 27.87% for vegetation aboveground biomass, and 12.89% and 4.42% for vegetation coverage, respectively. In the path analysis between environment and vegetation properties, vegetation was directly affected by soil moisture at 40 cm and 60 cm depths, whereas indirectly influenced by relative humidity at 20 cm height and soil temperature at 40 cm depth. This might be related to the downward movement of the soil moisture caused by warming.
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Desertification is one of the most serious environmental problems on a global scale. China suffers from desertification over large areas. Landscape boundaries profoundly influence the structure and function of landscapes, and influence ecological processes both locally and over large scales. Data on soil properties and vegetation collected on three 110 km parallel transects across sandy land-steppe transition zone in Yanchi county, Ningxia region, northwestern China, were used to analyze changes along the sandy land/steppe boundary by using the Moving Split Window (MSW), to determine desertification dynamics, and to explore changes of vegetation and soil properties among different desertification degree. Combining the dissimilarity profiles of soil particle size with importance value (IV) of vegetation, four boundaries were detected along transects. According to the four boundaries, we divided the whole sandy land/steppe ecotone area into five desertification categories: potential desertification (PD), light desertification (LD), medium desertification (MD), severe desertification (SD) and extreme desertification (ED). Sand fractions increased, while silt and clay fractions, soil organic C, total N and available N decreased and exhibited clear gradient changes from the potential desertification land to the extreme desertification land. All areas we studied have been desertificated at different degree based upon soil particle compositions at different depths. With the aggravation of sandy desertification, the steppe species dominating in the potential desertification land gradually gave place to arid and sand tolerant perennials and therophytes and eventually to psammophyte annuals and shrubs in the extreme desertification land.
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