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- Title
Grassland management regimes regulate soil phosphorus fractions and conversion between phosphorus pools in semiarid steppe ecosystems.
- Authors
Sun, Qi; Jia, Ruoyu; Qin, Jiachen; Wang, Yang; Lu, Xiaoming; Yang, Peizhi; Bai, Yongfei
- Abstract
Although livestock grazing can strongly affect pools and cycles of phosphorus (P) in grassland ecosystems, few studies have examined how grassland management regimes influence the components of the soil P pool. Here, we use a long-term experiment in the Inner Mongolia grassland to examine how grassland management and biotic and abiotic factors affect soil P fractions. The grassland management regimes we studied included a traditional grazing system (continuous grazing, TS), a mixed grazing system (grazing and mowing rotation, MS), and a haymaking system (continuous mowing, HS). Our results showed that traditional grazing accelerated the return of P to ecosystems lost by herbivores and decoupled labile P (i.e., Ca2-P) from soil organic carbon in the topsoil (0–10 cm). Labile P was significantly reduced in the topsoil in HS (− 10%) and MS (− 24%). Mowing promoted the downward movement of soil P and the transformation of O-P to Ca2-P in the topsoil by removing large amounts of biomass and litter. Both grazing and mowing increased Fe-P and Ca10-P concentrations. The amount of labile P in the topsoil was mainly explained by plant properties, whereas the amounts of moderately labile P (Ca8-P, Al-P and Fe-P) and stable P (O-P and Ca10-P) were mainly explained by soil properties. Moreover, shifts in plant community composition resulted in substantial impacts on the soil stable P fractions. Our study demonstrates that long-term continuous grazing is detrimental to the accumulation of available nutrients in soils. Understanding how grazing and mowing affect conversion between P pools could improve adaptive grassland management in the face of global change.
- Subjects
INNER Mongolia (China); GRASSLAND soils; PHOSPHORUS in soils; ROTATIONAL grazing; STEPPES; GRASSLANDS; ECOSYSTEMS
- Publication
Biogeochemistry, 2023, Vol 163, Issue 1, p33
- ISSN
0168-2563
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10533-023-01019-w