Abstract
Fertilization and mowing affects the physico-chemical properties of soils, as well as the characteristics of the plants growing on them. Changes in the management techniques are causing semi-natural grasslands to disappear all over Europe. These grasslands host a great amount of diversity, thus their conservation is a top priority. This work studies whether the kind of management has an influence on the soil properties and the foliar content in macronutrients in 25 hay meadows located in Picos de Europa (10 in Asturias, 10 in Castilla y León and 5 in Cantabria). Soils at a 0–20 cm depth showed a high content of organic matter and a low C/N ratio. Effective cation exchange capacity was adequate for a texture, which varied from sandy clay loam to loam, with an average clay content of 17%. Mean values of foliar nutrient concentrations showed a deficiency in K. In this study, management practices were shown to affect some properties of the soils, namely pH, sand percentage and exchangeable K and Ca, to different extents. The highest values of pH and exchangeable Ca were significantly correlated with the least intensive management.
Highlights
Regarding the ANOVA test with management practices as a control variable, the results show that the highest values of pH, conductivity and exchangeable Ca were found in unfertilized plots, while the highest values of exchangeable K and sand percentage were found in fertilized plots (Table 4, p < 0.05)
The results showed that the pH negatively correlated to foliar Ca in the groups of legumes and other families
Among the general properties of the representative soils in the 25 plots spread around five areas of hay meadows in Picos de Europa, the most remarkable results are the high contents of organic matter, the low C/N and the high levels of soil available P
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Hay meadows have been included in Habitat Directive 92/43 EEC (EnvironmentEuropean Commission) as Habitat 6510 (Low-Land meadows, alliance Arrhenatherion [1]). Habitat 6520 (Mountain meadows, alliance Triseto-Polygonion bistortae [2]) because of their high plant and animal diversity [3]. These ecosystems are suffering regression everywhere in Europe due to changes in management practices [4]. Traditional management of hay meadows is only retained in Romania, Bulgaria, North-western Portugal, Northern
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