Effects of vegetation restoration on soil organic carbon in the Loess Plateau: A meta‐analysis

Abstract

Vegetation restoration is one of the most effective ways to increase soil organic carbon (SOC). After the implementation of vegetation restoration policies such as the Grain‐for‐Green Program, which has increased regional vegetation coverage. However, the impact of land use, vegetation types, restoration time, and topographic and meteorological factors on SOC remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined the effect of vegetation restoration on SOC in the Loess Plateau through a meta‐analysis of 520 sample data collected from 60 research papers. The results showed that vegetation restoration in the Loess Plateau significantly increased SOC by 29.40%. Restoration time was the most important factor affecting the SOC after revegetation. Land use type was an important factor that influenced SOC; the most significant impact on SOC was found when the previous land use type was abandoned land and the current land use type was woodland. Different vegetation types resulted in different SOC as follows: Fagaceae > Salicaceae > Pinaceae > Leguminosae. Broad‐leaved forests had significantly higher SOC than that of coniferous forests. Non‐nitrogen‐fixing plants increased SOC significantly compared to nitrogen‐fixing plants. SOC decreased in 0–5 years after vegetation restoration, and then increased with the increase of restoration years. Especially, the soil carbon sequestration effect of vegetation has been significantly improved after 10 years of restoration.

Combined self-potential and electromagnetic imaging provides insights into the spatial variation of wetland soil hydro-biogeochemical properties

“…The electrochemical behavior of organic matter is related to the development of surface charges and cation exchange capacity [74]. Exploring this relationship further could provide an indirect but cost-effective non-invasive approach to assess the distribution of soil organic matter in restored wetlands, which do not only vary spatially but temporally post-restoration [75].…”

Promoting effects of soil C and N and limiting effect of soil P jointly determine the plant diversity during the aerial seeding restoration process in Mu Us sandy land, China

“…Further, this study integrated restoration time, soil nutrients, and climate to explore their relative contributions to plant taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity and found that the plant diversity of three dimensions was mainly affected by the coupling effect of restoration time and soil nutrients during the restoration process (Figure 5). The meta-analysis on vegetation ecological restoration conducted by Zhao et al (2023) on the Loess Plateau found that restoration time was the main factor affecting soil organic carbon after vegetation restoration. This suggested that restoration time improved plant diversity in multiple dimensions, mainly by improving soil nutrients.…”

Forest restoration decouple soil C:N:P stoichiometry but has little effects on microbial biodiversity globally

“…Soil C:N:P stoichiometry changes dramatically during forest restoration, which influenced mainly by plant type, mycorrhizal type and climatic zone (Jia et al, 2005; Ouyang et al, 2017; Pan et al, 2021; Song et al, 2019; Zhang et al, 2018). It has been shown that soil C, N and P increased as the succession proceeds (Gao and Huang, 2020; Zhao et al, 2023; Zhou et al, 2017), whereas others showed that total phosphorus (TP) decreased as forest age increased in plantations (Yu et al, 2022; Zhang et al, 2021). Furthermore, forest restoration induced increase in soil C:P and N:P far more than that of C:N, suggesting that forests are primarily limited by P over time (Ouyang et al, 2017; Pan et al, 2021; Zhang et al, 2018; Zhou & Wang, 2016).…”