Anthropogenic and climate impacts on carbon stocks of grassland ecosystems in Inner Mongolia and adjacent region

Abstract

Up to date, most studies reported that degradation is worsened in the grassland ecosystems of Inner Mongolia and adjacent regions as a result of intensified grazing. This seems to be scientific when considering the total forage or total above-ground biomass as a degradation indicator, but it does not hold true in terms of soil organic carbon density (SOCD). In this study, we quantified the changes of grassland ecosystem carbon stock in Inner Mongolia and adjacent regions from the 1980s to 2000s and identified the major drivers influencing these variations, using the National Grassland Resource Inventory and Soil Survey Dataset in 1980s and the Inventory data during 2002 to 2009 covering 624 sampling plots concerned vegetal traits and edaphic properties across the study region. The result indicated that the above-, below-ground and total vegetation biomass declined from the 1980s to 2000s by ∼ 10 %. However, total forage production increased by 6.72 % when considering livestock intake. SOCD remained stable despite a 67 % increase in grazing intensity. A generalized linear model (GLIM) analysis suggested that an increase in grazing intensity from the 1980s to 2000s could only explain 1.04 % of the total biomass change, while changes in precipitation and temperature explained 17.7 % (p < 0.05) of total vegetation biomass (TVB) change. Meanwhile, SOCD change during 1980s - 2000s could be explained 10.08 % by the soil texture (p < 0.05) and <1.6 % by changes in climate and livestock. This implies that the impacts of climate change on grassland biomass are more significant than those of grazing utilization, and SOCD was resistant to both climate change and intensified grazing. Overall, intensified grazing did not result in significant negative impacts on the grassland carbon stocks in the study region during the 1980s and 2000s. The grassland ecosystems possess a mechanism to adjust their root-shoot ratio, enabling them to maintain resilience against grazing utilization.