Grazing effects on soil characteristics and vegetation of grassland in northern China
-
Published:2016-01-15
Issue:1
Volume:7
Page:55-65
-
ISSN:1869-9529
-
Container-title:Solid Earth
-
language:en
-
Short-container-title:Solid Earth
Author:
Wang Z.,Johnson D. A.,Rong Y.,Wang K.
Abstract
Abstract. Large areas of grassland in the agro-pastoral region of northern China were converted into cropland for grain production, and the remaining grasslands are being overgrazed and seriously degraded. The objective of this study was to evaluate how reductions in grazing intensity affect the soil and vegetation characteristics in grasslands of northern China. Soil heterogeneity and vegetation characteristics were evaluated for ungrazed (UG), moderate grazing (MG), and heavy grazing (HG) sites. Grazing increased diversity, but heavy grazing decreased aboveground biomass and increased the non-grass component. The non-grass proportion of total biomass increased with grazing intensity, which was 8, 16 and 48 % for UG, MG and HG sites, respectively. Species richness at the MG and HG sites was significantly higher than at the UG site (P< 0.05) with 3.6, 5.5 and 5.7 for UG, MG and HG sites, respectively. Strong spatial dependence of the examined soil properties at 10 m scale for all grazed sites was revealed by the ratio of nugget to total variation (0–23 %). Overgrazing homogenized soil characteristics at a 10 m scale. The ranges of spatial autocorrelation for soil organic C (SOC) and total N were both > 120 m at the HG site, which was considerably larger than that at the MG and UG sites with corresponding distances of 17.3 and 20.8 m for the MG site and 8.6 and 15.0 m for the UG site, respectively. The sampling density and sampling space for the HG site could be decreased under this scale sampling interval (10 m). Therefore, MG was recommended as the preferred management alternative for grasslands in northern China because of increased plant diversity without negative consequences related to decreased forage quality, forage quantity and soil heterogeneity for the investigated soil properties in northern China's grasslands.
Funder
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
Subject
Paleontology,Stratigraphy,Earth-Surface Processes,Geochemistry and Petrology,Geology,Geophysics,Soil Science
Reference48 articles.
1. Adler, P. B., Raff, D. A., and Lauenroth, W. K.: The effect of grazing on the
spatial heterogeneity of vegetation, Oecologia, 128, 465–479, 2001. 2. Angassa, A.: Effects of grazing intensity and bush encroachment on herbaceous
species and rangeland condition in southern Ethiopia, Land Degrad. Dev., 25,
438–451, 2014. 3. Augustine, D. J. and Frank, D. A.: Effects of migratory grazers on spatial
heterogeneity of soil nitrogen properties in a grassland ecosystem, Ecology,
82, 3149–3162, 2001. 4. Bestelmeyer, B. T., Tugel, A. J., Peacock, G. L., Robinett, D. G., Shaver, P.
L., Brown, J. R., Herrick, J. E., Sanchez, H., and Havstad, K. M.:
State-and-transition models for heterogeneous landscapes: A strategy for
development and application, Rangeland Ecol. Manage., 62, 1–15, 2009. 5. Cambardella, C. A., Moorman, T. B., Novak, J. M., Parkin, T. B., Karlen, D.
L., Turco, R. F., and Konopka, A. E.: Field-scale variability of soil
properties in central Iowa soils, Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 58, 1501–1511,
1994.
Cited by
21 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献
|
|