Abstract
The spatial pattern of soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) densities plays a profound important role in estimating carbon and nitrogen budgets. Naiman Banner located in northern China was chosen as research site, a total of 332 soil samples were taken in a depth of 100 cm from the low hilly land in the southern part, sandy land in the middle part and an alluvial plain in the northern part of the county. The results showed that SOC and TN density initially decreased and then increased from the north to the south, The highest densities, were generally in the south, with the lowest generally in the middle part. The SOC and TN densities in cropland were significantly greater than those in woodland and grassland in the alluvial plains and for Naiman as a whole. The woodland SOC and TN density were higher than those of grassland in the low hilly land, and higher densities of SOC and TN in grassland than woodland in the sandy land and low hilly land. There were significant differences in SOC and TN densities among the five soil types of Cambisols, Arenosols, Gleysols, Argosols, and Kastanozems. In addition, SOC and TN contents generally decreased with increasing soil depth, but increased below a depth of 40 cm in the Cambisols and became roughly constant at this depth in the Kastanozems. There is considerable potential to sequester carbon and nitrogen in the soil via the conversion of degraded sandy land into woodland and grassland in alluvial plain, and more grassland should be established in sandy land and low hilly land.
Highlights
Soil is a huge C pool and plays an important role in global warming due to greenhouse gas emission and mutual impact on nitrogen cycle
We studied the rate of accumulation of carbon and nitrogen in the plant–soil system after restoration of active sand dunes [16], soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) storage under different land uses were not studied for the whole Naiman Banner, where located in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China
We divided the Horqin Sandy Land into three parts based on the land characteristics detected in Landsat ETM+ satellite images with a resolution of 30 × 30m from June 2010 and July 2015 (Fig 1C and 1D): the northern part of the region is dominated by alluvial plains, the central part is characterized by sandy land dominated by sand dunes that alternate with gently undulating interdunal lowlands, and the southern part is dominated by low hills
Summary
Soil is a huge C pool and plays an important role in global warming due to greenhouse gas emission and mutual impact on nitrogen cycle. Soil emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is estimated to be six times the amount derived from fossil fuels [1, 2]. The global soil carbon pool (2500 Gt) is three times the size of the atmospheric carbon pool (760 Gt), 4.5 times of the biotic pool (560 Gt) [3]. Spatial pattern and related factors of SOC and TN. Jie Lian and Yongqing Luo were responsible for the field investigation, Yayi Niu and Xiangwen Gong were responsible for the soil sampling, and laboratory analyses
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