Abstract
The effect of climatic factors on soil nutrients is significant. Identifying whether soil nutrients respond to local climate and how the forest types modulate this responsiveness is critical for forest management. Therefore, six soil nutrients from five main forest types found for a range of sites within the Daxing’an Mountains, China, were investigated. Climatic factors were obtained from the WorldClim dataset. Pearson correlations and stepwise regressions were employed to elucidate and model the response of the six soil nutrients to the four different climatic factors in this study. On the whole, climate was correlated with all the nutrients. Further, from stepwise regressions, climatic factors could affect soil nutrients in distinct forests. Our findings suggest that climatic factors are instrumental in affecting soil nutrients in different forest types. Identifying the relationships between soil nutrients, climatic factors and forest types, as suggested in this research, can provide theoretical foundations to further comprehend nutrient cycling in the forest ecosystem.
Highlights
Climate changes have significant effects on ecosystems
With the primary focus on the links between ecosystems and climate change, gradients of natural climate are noteworthy in studying the interactions between climate and variation in forest ecosystem processes
A, B, C, D, E and F were respectively represent for SOC, total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), TK, AP and available K (AK) content of five forest types. “” = average value, “×” = outliter
Summary
Climate changes have significant effects on ecosystems. Terrestrial ecosystems play a dominant and irreplaceable role, due to the functions of releasing and absorbing greenhouse gases in such climate-feedbacks, while storing a great deal of carbon in vegetation and soil, serving as the global carbon sink [1]. Some studies have shown that there are strong linkages between climate change and soil. The study of Brittany et al showed that the gradient of climates (precipitation and temperature) has obvious regulating effects on the physical and chemical properties of soil, such as pH, Mg2+ , N, P and K content [2]. The effects of climatic factors on SOC (soil organic carbon) density were obvious and stronger than those of grassland and farmland [3]
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