Abstract
Plant litter is an important component in wetland ecosystems, and the role of plant litter decomposition is considered to be important for wetland ecosystem functions and services. However, the consequences of litter inputs have seldom been experimentally tested in real ecosystems such as constructed wetlands (CWs). The enriched nutrients in CWs might weaken the role of litter inputs on soil carbon and nitrogen cycling. Here, we conducted a two-month field experiment to examine the effects of litter inputs on the soils in CWs. Our results showed that litter inputs significantly affected soil microbial (bacterial and fungi) diversities and properties (soil total nitrogen and nitrogen isotopes), and litter species with higher stoichiometry ratios, i.e. C/N, C/P and N/P led to higher microbial diversities. However, litter species had no or weak effects on microbial activities (CO2 and CH4 flux) or on the relative abundance of microbial communities, indicating that other environmental factors in such a CW might have stronger effects on those factors than litter inputs. These results highlighted the importance of submerged plant litter in nutrient-rich wetland ecosystems and provide potential tools for managers to improve the ecosystem functions and/or services via altering microbial diversities.
Highlights
Plant litter as the end of primary production entering into detritus food chains plays an important role in wetland ecosystems, and its decomposition can recycle carbon and multiple nutrients, alter environmental variables, and affect wetland ecosystem functions and services[1,2,3,4,5]
There are multiple pathways that plant litter can affect the soils in wetland ecosystems: (1) litter inputs can have various effects on soil invertebrates or microbes via different physical and chemical traits; (2) litter inputs can provide food, microhabitat or shelter for soil microbes or other soil fauna[33,34]; (3) litter inputs can have negative effects via
All above mechanisms indicated that plant litter traits as litter qualities can strongly influence the chemical and physical composition of litter inputs, and thereby their decomposability[15] and lead to substantial consequences to wetland ecosystems
Summary
Plant litter as the end of primary production entering into detritus food chains plays an important role in wetland ecosystems, and its decomposition can recycle carbon and multiple nutrients, alter environmental variables, and affect wetland ecosystem functions and services[1,2,3,4,5]. The main methodology to test those effects of plant litter was firstly to sample soils from the field, and either directly quantify the soil properties and microbial community composition or activity[23,25]; or subsequently set up new controlled experiments in the lab with the litterbag method or soil-litter mixing method[18,26,27,41]. For the latter case, knowledge about effects of litter mixing on soil is derived mostly from ‘indoor’ experiments carried out in strictly controlled environments, or via quantifying the litter mass loss and nutrient release[42,43]. The purpose of our work was to fully understand the role of plant litter in constructed wetlands and develop potential tools for the maintenance, improvement and management of constructed wetlands using plant litter materials
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