Soil microbiochemical properties as indicators for success of heathland restoration after military disturbance

Abstract

Decline of heathlands in Central Europe raises the question of successful restoration of degraded heathlands. We examined the impact of different restoration techniques on soil microbial biomass carbon (C mic ) and nitrogen (N mic ) and enzyme activity on an abandoned military training site in the Lüneburger Heaths. The aim was to determine which technique resulted in typical heathland soil conditions. The training site was in use for about 50 years. Vegetation and soils were degraded in large areas. Restoration actions were: (1) spreading of heath plaggen (sods, containing the organic layer and a few centimetres mineral soil), (2) spreading of heath plaggen and grass seeds (Festuca filiformis Pourr.), (3) spreading of F. filiformis-seeds and (4) succession (episodical tree removal). Ten years after restoration, we measured pH, bulk density, abundance of roots, soil organic carbon (SOC), nitrogen (N t ), phosphorus (P t ), C mic , N mic and acid phosphatase activity (AcP) in the first 10 cm of the mineral soil. Four restoration treatments were compared with one reference site. The reference site is heathland located near the training site, where no military actions took place.At all disturbed sites, bulk density and pH proved to be higher than on the reference site. Relative to the reference site, SOC storage reached from 37 to 91 per cent, regeneration of N t was slightly lower. In contrast to the advanced development of SOC and Nt, the regeneration of C mic and N mic was much lower (15-44 per cent). The succession site showed a low pool of SOC, N t , C mic and N mic , but microbial ratios indicated a less disturbed C-and N-cycle. AcP pronounced differences in nutrient demand between disturbed sites and reference. On this base, recommendations for restoration management were given.

Long‐term restoration altered edaphic properties and soil microbial communities in forests: evidence from four plantations of southern China

“…By 2013, GFGP had reestablished forests for about 27.8 million ha and most of the restored forests are monocultures and compositionally simple mixed plantations (Hua et al 2016). The aim of vegetation recovery is not only the establishment of sustainable plant communities (Orozco-Aceves et al 2017) and improvement of soil physicochemical properties (Gasch et al 2014), but also the development of the soil microbes (Heitkamp et al 2008). Traditional recovery measures mainly concentrate on colonization and investigation of aboveground vegetation communities.…”

Changes in soil nitrogen availability due to stand development and management practices on semi‐arid sandy lands, in northern China

“…Available soil N mainly comes from the mineralization of organic N (Binkley and Hart, 1989;Vestgarden and Kjønaas, 2003). Soil N availability directly influences the productivity of terrestrial ecosystems (Reich et al, 1997); in addition, N availability impacts plant biodiversity, community succession, and long-term ecosystem resilience (Schlesinger, 1997;Heitkamp et al, 2008). Although the classical N mineralization paradigm of N cycling may be incomplete, and many studies have shown that plants can use amino acids and other organic N forms (Schimel and Bennett, 2004), soil N mineralization is still an important criterion for evaluating forest N cycling (Loreau, 1994;Larsen, 1995;Schlesinger, 1997;Chen et al, 2006b).…”