Desertification Effects on Calorific Value, Biomass and Energy Allocation in Horqin Sandy Land, Inner Mongolia, North China

Abstract

The Horqin Sandy Land is one of the most seriously desertified regions of China. In this paper, we measured the aboveground and belowground biomass, caloric value in biomass components, and biomass energy allocation at three distinct land-cover types of habitat along a desertification gradient in Horqin Sandy Land: non-desertification land (ND), light desertification land (LD), and severe desertification land (SD). The results indicated that not only plant biomass decreased significantly but plant life-form and proportion of biomass components changed with desertification development. The more serious desertification of sandy land, the higher proportion of living biomass accounted for the total aboveground and belowground biomass, and the lower surface litter and belowground litter accumulated. Plant communities of sandy land have the lower ability to convert solar energy into organic matter. The worse was that desertification limited the amount of energy inputting and resulted in producerpsilas function weakening or bankrupting in ecosystem.