4.6 Article

Effects of litter and root manipulations on soil carbon and nitrogen in a Schrenk's spruce (Picea schrenkiana) forest

Journal

PLOS ONE
Volume 16, Issue 2, Pages -

Publisher

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247725

Keywords

-

Funding

  1. Key Laboratory Open Topic of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region [2019D04001]
  2. National Natural Science Foundation of China [31760142]
  3. Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Graduate Research and Innovation Project [XJ2020G010]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

This study investigated the effects of litter and root manipulations on soil C and N concentrations, enzyme activity, and microbial biomass. The results showed that short-term input of plant detritus significantly influenced the concentrations and biological characteristics of soil C and N fractions. Additionally, the study found that roots contributed more to soil nutrients than litter.
Plant detritus represents the major source of soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N), and changes in its quantity can influence below-ground biogeochemical processes in forests. However, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how above- and belowground detrital inputs affect soil C and N in mountain forests in an arid land. Here, we explored the effects of litter and root manipulations (control (CK), doubled litter input (DL), removal of litter (NL), root exclusion (NR), and a combination of litter removal and root exclusion (NI)) on soil C and N concentrations, enzyme activity and microbial biomass during a 2-year field experiment. We found that DL had no significant effect on soil total organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) but significantly increased soil dissolved organic carbon (DOC), microbial biomass C, N and inorganic N as well as soil cellulase, phosphatase and peroxidase activities. Conversely, NL and NR reduced soil C and N concentrations and enzyme activities. We also found an increase in the biomass of soil bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes in the DL treatment, while NL reduced the biomass of gram-positive bacteria, gram-negative bacteria and fungi by 5.15%, 17.50% and 14.17%, respectively. The NR decreased the biomass of these three taxonomic groups by 8.97%, 22.11% and 21.36%, respectively. Correlation analysis showed that soil biotic factors (enzyme activity and microbial biomass) and abiotic factors (soil moisture content) significantly controlled the change in soil C and N concentrations (P < 0.01). In brief, we found that the short-term input of plant detritus could markedly affect the concentrations and biological characteristics of the C and N fractions in soil. The removal experiment indicated that the contribution of roots to soil nutrients is greater than that of the litter.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.6
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available