Abstract
Abstract Soil carbon and nutrient contents and their importance in advancing our understanding of biogeochemical cycling in terrestrial ecosystem, has motivated ecologists to find their spatial patterns in various geographical area. Few studies have focused on changes in the physical and chemical properties of soils at high altitudes. Our aim was to identify the spatial distribution of soil physical and chemical properties in cold and arid climatic region. We also tried to explore relationship between soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), available nitrogen (AN), available phosphorus (AP), soil particle size distribution (PSD). Samples were collected at 44 sites along a 300 km transect across the alpine grassland of northern Tibet. The study results showed that grassland type was the main factor influencing SOC, TN and TP distribution along the Gangdise Mountain-Shenzha-Shuanghu Transect. SOC, TN and TP contents were significantly higher in alpine meadow than alpine steppe ecosystems. SOC, TN, TP and AN contents in two soil layers (0–15 cm and 15–30 cm) showed no significant differences, while AP content in top soil (0–15 cm) was significantly higher than that in sub-top soil (15–30 cm). SOC content was correlated positively with TN and TP content (r = 0.901 and 0.510, respectively). No correlations were detected for clay content and fractal dimension of particle size distribution (D). Our study results indicated the effects of vegetation on soil C, N and P seem to be more important than that of rocks itself along latitude gradient on the northern Tibetan Plateau. However, we did not found similar impacts of vegetation on soil properties in depth. In addition, this study also provided an interesting contribution to the global data pool on soil carbon stocks.
Highlights
The terrestrial ecosystem C pool is about twice that in the atmosphere and nearly three times that in aboveground biomass (Eswaran et al 1993; Heimann and Reichstein 2008), which plays an important role in global carbon cycle
Received: 3 June 2012 Accepted: 20 March 2013 addition, this study provided an interesting contribution to the global data pool on soil carbon stocks
The coefficient of variation (CV) of both grassland types can be arranged in the order soil organic carbon (SOC) > available nitrogen (AN) > total nitrogen (TN) > available phosphorus (AP) > total phosphorus (TP), and all are moderately variable
Summary
The terrestrial ecosystem C pool is about twice that in the atmosphere and nearly three times that in aboveground biomass (Eswaran et al 1993; Heimann and Reichstein 2008), which plays an important role in global carbon cycle. Small changes in terrestrial ecosystem C pools will have significant effects on global C balance and climate change. Alpine steppe and meadow are the dominant grassland types in northern Tibet, which cover a combined 94.4% of the total land area in this region(Gao et al 2009a). The alpine grassland ecosystem is extremely sensitive to environmental changes on the northern Tibetan Plateau due to arid and cool climate. Soil C storage in grasslands is affected by many factors, including land management(BatlleBayer et al 2010; Preger et al 2010; Wang et al 2011) and climate change (Johnson et al 2011; Xu et al 2011).
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