Spatial heterogeneity of soil phosphorus and potassium in a mixed evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved forest in karst region of southwest China

Spatial Variations in Soil Physicochemical Properties and Enzyme Activities in the Low Mountain Area of Helan Mountain

“…Temperature, soil moisture content, microbial decomposition and conversion rate significantly affected the soil nutrient status. Previous research on soil nutrients both in karst evergreen deciduous broad-leaved mixed forest and in the small watershed of the Loess Plateau showed that organic matter and available phosphorus were negatively correlated with altitude, which was consistent with the results of this study (Yang et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2017). Some studies found that organic matter and available phosphorus were positively correlated with altitude, which may be due to the higher temperature in the low altitude area and the resulting higher decomposition and transformation efficiency of soil microorganisms (Wu et al, 2014;Xie et al, 2019).…”

“…These studies have shown that soil physical and chemical factors and enzyme activities vary between altitudes, but the trends of changes in the soil physical and chemical factors and enzyme activities with increasing altitude are inconsistent (Liu et al, 2013; Gonzalez et al, 2014). For example, the oil organic matter content and available phosphorus content decreased with increasing altitude in the Wumeng Mountain area of Yunnan Province (Xie et al, 2019), while these indicators increased with increasing altitude in karst evergreen deciduous broad-leaved mixed forest (Wang et al, 2017). Furthermore, soil urease activity and alkaline phosphatase activity showed decreasing trends with increasing altitude in Nyenchen Tanglha Mountain swamp (Si et al, 2014), while the activities of sucrase and urease in soil showed increasing-decreasing-increasing trends with increasing altitude in the alpine canyon area of western Sichuan (Cao et al, 2016).…”