Effects of land‐use regimes on carbon sequestration in the Loess Plateau, northern China

Xu-dong, LI; Fu, Hua; Li, Xiaodong; Guo, Ding; Dong, Xiaoyu; Wan, Changgui

doi:10.1080/00288230809510434

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Livestock grazing is a pivotal issue affecting plant growth, species diversity and soil carbon accumulation in grasslands (Olff and Ritchie, 1998;Watkinson and Ormerod, 2001;Piñeiro et al, 2010;McSherry and sity. For carbon sequestration, some studies found that grazing exclusion facilitated vegetation recovery, increased plant productivity and thus enhance soil carbon stocks in degraded grasslands (Biondini et al, 1998;McIntosh and Allen, 1998;Li et al, 2008;Mekuria et al, 2007;Mekuria and Veldkamp, 2012;Xiong et al, 2014). Others, however, reported no change (McNaughton et al, 1998;Pucheta et al, 2004) or even decline of carbon stocks in grasslands (Schuman et al, 1999;Leriche et al, 2001;Frank et al, 2002;Wienhold et al, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

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

173

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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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Section: Introductionmentioning

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

173

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“…Motivated by the rapid increase in atmospheric CO 2 due to human activities (Amthor 1995;Luo et al 2007), much research has focused on ways to mitigate CO 2 emissions or remove CO 2 from the atmosphere, including sequestering carbon (C) in the terrestrial biosphere (Marland et al 2001;Lal 2002Lal , 2004Reeder et al 2004;Li et al 2008;Manning 2008;Xie et al 2009). Carbon sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems occurs through physiochemical and biological processes (Schimel et al 1994;Williams et al 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grazing exclusion alters ecosystem carbon pools in Alxa desert steppe

Niu

Hall

et al. 2011

New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research

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The Alxa desert steppe has been strongly degraded by overgrazing, contributing c. 22% of the total springtime dust originating from Asia. Previous work in this region has focused on the impacts of grazer exclusion on restoration of vegetation and soil fertility, yet carbon dynamics are not well known. The effects of 7 years of grazer exclusion on carbon dynamics were studied and related to changes in vegetation and soil properties. Removal of grazing resulted in a significantly greater plant cover and aboveground plant biomass compared with areas that had been subject to grazing, but this had no effects on belowground plant biomass. Removal of grazing resulted in significantly decreased soil bulk density in the 0Á10 cm layer, increased soil water content (7% cf. 40%) and greater soil microbial biomass C (6% cf. 73%) compared with soils in the grazed area. Soil organic carbon (SOC) pools were lower and soil inorganic carbon (SIC) pools were higher in areas that were excluded from grazing. After 7 years of grazer exclusion, the total C pool in the plantÁsoil system was 10% greater (primarily due to 21% greater in SIC) than that in the area that had been grazed over that time period.

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“…In this region, different harvesting methods left small amounts of residues to the soil. So, it is reasonable to assume that the higher LF concentration in the surface soil in GG can be attributed to the higher biomass input than that in MC (Li et al, 2008). In addition, LF represents main soil active organic matter, which is altered not only by litter input but also by litter decomposition and erosion.…”

Section: Mass Concentrations In Light-and Heavy-fractions Of Bulk Soilmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…But others reported that the re-established grassland had significantly lower SOC storages than cropland (Li et al, 2008a). These different responses might result from different sampling depths (0-20 cm in Liu et al (2010) and 0-100 cm in Li et al (2008)). Li et al (2008) neither investigate the processes underlying SOC responses to land-use type nor identify the SOC storages that may have high potential for soil carbon sequestration.…”

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confidence: 95%

“…These different responses might result from different sampling depths (0-20 cm in Liu et al (2010) and 0-100 cm in Li et al (2008)). Li et al (2008) neither investigate the processes underlying SOC responses to land-use type nor identify the SOC storages that may have high potential for soil carbon sequestration. Here, we investigated density fractions of SOC at 0-60 cm sampling depths under the same grassland and cropland settings as in Li et al (2008a).…”

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confidence: 95%

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Conventional tillage improves the storage of soil organic carbon in heavy fractions in the Loess Plateau, China

Han

Niu

et al. 2015

J. Arid Land

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Soil labile organic carbon (C) plays an important role in improving soil quality. The relatively stable fractions of soil organic C (SOC) represent the bulk of SOC, and are also the primary determinant of the long-term C balance of terrestrial ecosystems. Different land use types can influence the distribution patterns of different SOC fractions. However, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. In the present study, different fractions of SOC were determined in two land use types: a grazed grassland (established on previously cultivated cropland 25 years ago, GG) and a long-term cultivated millet cropland (MC). The results showed that C concentration and C storage of light fractions (LF) and heavy fractions (HF) presented different patterns along the soil profiles in the two sites. More plant residues in GG resulted in 91.9% higher LF storage at the 0-10 cm soil depth, further contributed to 21.9% higher SOC storage at this soil depth; SOC storage at 20-60 cm soil depth in MC was 98.8% higher than that in GG, which could be mainly attributed to the HF storage 104.5% higher than in GG. This might be caused by the long-term application of organic manure, as well as the protection from plough pan and silt-and clay-sized particles. The study indicated that different soil management practices in this region can greatly influence the variations of different SOC fractions, while the conventional tillage can greatly improve the storage of SOC by increasing heavy fractions.

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Effects of land‐use regimes on carbon sequestration in the Loess Plateau, northern China

Abstract: The effects of different land-use regimes on C sequestration in the terrestrial ecosystems were investigated in the Loess Plateau. We found that the surface soil (0-10 cm) was more active at sequestering carbon after land had been used as grassland.

Cited by 14 publications

References 27 publications

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

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

Grazing exclusion alters ecosystem carbon pools in Alxa desert steppe

Conventional tillage improves the storage of soil organic carbon in heavy fractions in the Loess Plateau, China

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