Effect of Plant Roots on Soil Nutrient Distributions in Shanghai Urban Landscapes

Abstract

Twenty-seven surface soil samples were collected from four landscape sites in Shanghai, and seven soil profile samples were gathered from the two older sites for evaluation of horizontal and vertical distribution of soil properties to reveal their relationship with plant roots. Results indicated that urban soil had significant heterogeneities. Soil total nitrogen was significantly correlated with organic matter and total potassium was more abundant than total phosphorus. The available contents of iron, manganese, zinc and copper were higher than the standards for plant growth established by Soltanpour. pH and electrical conductivity increased with increasing soil vertical depth, possibly due to leaching, while the nutrients limiting plant growth such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, iron, copper and zinc had more shallow distributions due to absorption by plant roots. However, with the increasing of soil depth, contents of magnesium, sodium, sulfur and chloride increased due to leaching and bio-cycling, which was further shown by the correlation analysis.

Utility of multivariate statistical analysis to identify factors contributing river water quality in two different seasons in cold-arid high-altitude region of Leh-Ladakh, India

“…Higher loadings of Ca and Mg were seen in the first factor, and these are strongly related to our previous study (Bharti et al 2017). High loadings of chloride might be from the dissolution of salts due to the weathering process or oxidation-reduction reaction (Sarin et al 1989;Datta and Tyagi 1996;Liang et al 2016). One of the previous studies in this study area on the soil had estimated that the soil alkalinity level is high (Charan 2013).…”

Effects of Co-Inoculating Saccharomyces spp. with Bradyrhizobium japonicum on Atmospheric Nitrogen Fixation in Soybeans (Glycine max (L.))

“…This might be due to the high demand for N by plants under T1 since there is no form of N supplantation, as well as high demand and effective and effective N mineral element scavenging structures (root) due to the abundant P being solubilized by the yeast which enhances root growth. This postulation is corroborated by Liang [ 73 ] who mentioned the ability of soil available P to promote root growth. It is worth mentioning that the roots are the plant structures responsible for scavenging and uptake of available N in the rhizosphere [ 74 ].…”

“…It is worth mentioning that the roots are the plant structures responsible for scavenging and uptake of available N in the rhizosphere [ 74 ]. Therefore, higher root growth and density will lead to high N depletion from the rhizosphere [ 73 , 74 ]. Furthermore, the relatively higher available N concentrations in soils under treatment T2 maybe be a result of the BNF by bacteria which led to less extraction of N from the rhizosphere.…”