Current re-vegetation patterns and restoration issues in degraded geological phosphorus-rich mountain areas: A synthetic analysis of Central Yunnan, SW China

Abstract

China has the largest area of inland geological phosphorus-rich (GPR) mountains in the world, where vegetation restoration is key to safeguarding the environment. We reviewed the published literature and collected new data in order to analyze re-vegetation patterns and the status of plant communities in central Yunnan. The aim of our analysis was to suggest future improvements to restoration strategies in GPR mountain regions. Our results showed that spontaneous recovery was the most widespread type of restoration. N-fixing species such as Coriaria nepalensis and Alnus nepalensis play a vital role in succession. In the past, monoculture tree plantation was the primary method used in afforestation activities in central Yunnan; in recent years however, several different methods of restoration have been introduced including the use of agroforestry systems. For practical restoration, we found that spontaneous recovery was capable of delivering the best results, but that during its early stages, restoration results were affected by several factors including erosion risk, the origin of propagates and environmental variation. In contrast, methods employing human-made communities performed better in their early stages, but were constrained by higher costs and vulnerability to degradation and erosion. The use of N-fixing species such as A. nepalensis and Acacia mearnsii in plantations were unsuccessful in restoring full ecosystem functions. The success of restoration activities in GPR mountain regions could be improved through the following measures: (1) developing a better understanding of the respective advantages and disadvantages of current natural and human-engineered restoration approaches; (2) elucidating the feedback mechanism between phosphorus-rich soil and species selected for restoration, especially N-fixing species; (3) introducing market incentives aimed at encouraging specific restoration activities such as agroforestry, and improving the industry value chain.

Caution Is Needed in Quantifying Terrestrial Biomass Responses to Elevated Temperature: Meta-Analyses of Field-Based Experimental Warming Across China

“…Meanwhile, field-based experiments concerning woody plants are still limited, especially for trees; this reduces the credible projection of our research regarding the climate-terrestrial C response in China. Moreover, research should also be undertaken to investigate the responses of special plants like relic species [23,29], invasive species [25,30], agroforestry trees [31,32], and plants living in special geological environments [17,33], often regarded in the investigation of ecosystem services for humanity, but for which field-based warming experiments are still limited. Finally, as we have mentioned, plant communities and their dominant species do not always show a constant response, and so to develop a full picture of warming-induced responses of plant biomass and C sequestration, additional long-term warming experiments regarding community stability [24], interspecific relations [30], functional diversity and evolution [13,16,18], etc., will be needed.…”

“…We have mentioned that plant types, phylogenetic features, and consequent adaptive strategies could lead to variations in the biomass response to warmer climates [15], and notably, community structures could also be changed [16]. Thus, in contrast to general biomass at the community-level, more attention needs to be paid to the relationships of community-level biomass and the trade-off with its dominant species, which could benefit re-vegetation management [17]. Third, it is still a debated question whether warming duration (the length of the experiment) could affect warming-induced cumulative biomass change: If we include this factor as a weight in the meta-analysis approach, would it lead to changes in accumulative responses [4,8,18]?…”

Alleviation of heavy metal stress and enhanced plant complex functional restoration in abandoned Pb–Zn mining areas by the nurse plant Coriaria nepalensis

“…When C. nepalensis was present, soil TN, TP, and organic matter increased significantly, while SHM contents decreased dramatically (Figures 2, 3 and Table 3). C. nepalensis is a non-legume actinorhizal N-fixing species with root nodules (Yan et al, 2017), and the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in concert with nodulating bacteria in its roots effectively fix nitrogen from the soil and air (Tiwari et al, 2003;Manral et al, 2022). Fang et al (2008) and Awasthi et al (2022c) proved that C. nepalensis was more important as a nitrogen source than grass or ferns in studies of artificial forests and natural forests on upland sites in Southwest China and Northeast India.…”

Comparing the long‐term effects of artificial and natural vegetation restoration strategies: A case‐study of Wuqi and its adjacent counties in northern China

“…Despite some studies focusing on vegetation restoration on a regional scale (Lin & Yao, 2014; Zhang, Jia, et al, 2019; Zhang, Jia, Xu, et al, 2018), they rarely compared the varying effects of artificial and natural restoration approaches. Some studies involve comparative analysis but lack spatial congruence (Wang et al, 2019; Yan et al, 2017), which leads to poor comparability.…”