Changes in plant community composition and soil properties under 3-decade grazing exclusion in semiarid grassland

Jing, Zhaobin; Cheng, Jimin; Su, Jishuai; Bai, Yu; Jin, Jingwei

doi:10.1016/j.ecoleng.2013.12.023

Cited by 137 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…The results in this study showed that grazing exclusion in Maqin alpine meadow could obviously increase aboveand belowground biomass and coverage, which was coincident with other studies [16,17]. As we know, longterm grazing accelerated leaf and shoot loss by domestic animal browsing and trampling, which should affect community composition and result in lower above-and belowground biomass and palatable species coverage.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Effects of Grazing Exclusion on Soil Properties in Maqin Alpine Meadow, Tibetan Plateau, China

Li¹,

Zhang²,

Shaojuan³

et al. 2016

Pol. J. Environ. Stud.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Effects of Grazing Exclusion on Soil Properties in Maqin Alpine Meadow, Tibetan Plateau, China

Li¹,

Zhang²,

Shaojuan³

et al. 2016

Pol. J. Environ. Stud.

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“…Because we are interested in the temporal patterns of grazing exclusion on ecosystem C pools, for studies conducted by chronosequence design for grazing exclusion compared with natural grazed grasslands in the same sites, we included each of the data in the analysis. In the final analysis of the SOC data set, we deleted 6 outliers from one paper with extreme high value (>100% increase of SOC stocks (Jing et al, 2014)). However, before doing this elimination, we confirmed that the results were qualitatively the same when including these outliers in the analyses .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of grazing exclusion on carbon sequestration and plant diversity in grasslands of China—A meta-analysis

Xiong

Shi

Zhang

et al. 2016

Ecological Engineering

175

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a b s t r a c tWidespread land degradation has strengthened the urgent need to restore overgrazing grasslands. China has implemented the program 'Returning Grazing Land to Grassland' (RGLG) through grazing exclusion by fence since 2003. Despite a lot of field experiments, there is still controversy on the effects of grazing exclusion on rangeland restoration, highlighting the need for synthetic analysis. We conducted a metaanalysis of 447 entries from 78 papers to analyze the spatiotemporal effects of grazing exclusion on plant diversity, productivity and soil carbon sequestration in the major RGLG-implemented provinces of China. Our results showed that, compared with the grazed sites, grazing exclusion significantly increased carbon stored in aboveground biomass, litter mass, belowground biomass and soils by 84.7%, 111.6%, 25.5% and 14.4%, respectively. Plant coverage, soil available nitrogen, soil available phosphorus and soil microbial biomass carbon increased by 52.0%, 21.7% 22.8% and 26.3%, respectively. However, grazing exclusion had little effects on recovering plant diversity in China's grasslands. Of the factors examined, climatic factors strongly modified the effects of grazing exclusion on ecosystem carbon stocks, for example, precipitation significantly amplified the positive effects. Grazing exclusion played a positive role in soil carbon sequestration in most grassland types except in temperate desert-steppe. But annual soil carbon sequestration rates decayed rapidly over time in both alpine meadow and temperate steppe. Short-term (≤5 years) grazing exclusion remarkably increased species richness, but not significantly in the long run. The threshold from neutral to negative effects of grazing exclusion on species evenness occurs after approximately ten years. Our findings provide evidence that grazing exclusion is an effective way to restore vegetation and sequestrate carbon in degraded grasslands, but not beneficial to plant diversity maintenance. The benefits of grazing exclusion are more effective in humid area than arid area. We suggest that grazing exclusion should be ceased after about six to ten years. Additionally, grazing exclusion should integrate with other appropriate management practices instead of operating on a stand-alone basis.

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“…Grassland should be the optimal land-use pattern for restoring eco-environments in the semiarid regions of the CLP. The specific management treatments (e.g., grazing, harvesting, irrigation and nitrogen fertilization), characteristics of the plant communities (e.g., coverage, plant density and species richness) and soil properties (e.g., SOC, bulk density and eukaryotes) of the grassland, however, require further study (Fehmi and Kong, 2012;Han et al, 2013;Jing et al, 2014a;Jing et al, 2014b;Lu et al, 2011). Our results provide important information on the status of soil water to a depth of 1800 cm and on the response of aboveground ANPP to the different patterns of land use.…”

Section: Aboveground Biomass Of C Korshinskii and Grasslandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Choosing an optimal land-use pattern for restoring eco-environments in a semiarid region of the Chinese Loess Plateau

Wang

Shao

Zhang

et al. 2015

Ecological Engineering

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A B S T R A C TThe natural environments in the semiarid regions of the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) are fragile due to the serious soil erosion and the weak ecological services of the plants. To ascertain and then evaluate a sustainable land-use pattern in these regions, we selected six typical land-use patterns (i.e., a farmland, a natural grassland, a homogeneous shrubland (S), a mix of shrubland and cultivated grassland (S-Alf), a mix of shrubland and orchard (S-O) and a mix of shrubland and grassland (S-G)) on the plateau and then measured the soil water, related soil properties and plant root indices to a depth of 1800 cm. We also measured the aboveground net primary productivities (ANPPs). The mean soil water content (SWC) within the 0-1800 cm profile was significantly highest (15.2%) in farmland, followed by grassland (11.4%) and S-Alf (8.0%). The available water (AW), the ratio between AW and AW capacity, and the thickness of the dried soil layers also demonstrated that farmland had the best conditions of soil water, followed by grassland and shrubland. The aboveground biomasses of grassland in both non-growing (140 g m À2 ) and growing (370 g m À2 ) seasons were significantly higher than those of shrublands. The ANPPs of the grassland (2.0 g m À2 d À1 ) demonstrated a similar trend. The patterns of land use (including the mixtures of different plant species) greatly affected the patterns of vertical distribution and quantities of soil water within the 1800-cm profile. The data for the soil-water regime and the ANPP further indicated that grassland would be an optimal use of the land for these semiarid regions. This information should be useful to the ecological scientists and policy makers for developing strategies for the sustainable management of vegetation on the CLP and possibly other water-limited regions around the world.

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Changes in plant community composition and soil properties under 3-decade grazing exclusion in semiarid grassland

Cited by 137 publications

References 46 publications

Effects of Grazing Exclusion on Soil Properties in Maqin Alpine Meadow, Tibetan Plateau, China

Effects of Grazing Exclusion on Soil Properties in Maqin Alpine Meadow, Tibetan Plateau, China

Effects of grazing exclusion on carbon sequestration and plant diversity in grasslands of China—A meta-analysis

Choosing an optimal land-use pattern for restoring eco-environments in a semiarid region of the Chinese Loess Plateau

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