Deepened snow cover mitigates soil carbon loss from intensive land use in a semi-arid temperate grassland.

Sayer, Emma (2022) Deepened snow cover mitigates soil carbon loss from intensive land use in a semi-arid temperate grassland. Functional Ecology, 36 (3). pp. 635-645. ISSN 0269-8463

[thumbnail of Li et al 2021 preprint]
Text (Li et al 2021 preprint)
Li_et_al_2021_preprint.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.

Download (13MB)

Abstract

1. Carbon (C) loss due to soil erosion is a major issue in semi-arid grasslands. The extent of soil erosion is determined by soil properties and vegetation structure, especially during the non-growing season. In many Inner Mongolian grasslands, intensive land-use, such as overgrazing and mowing, has severely reduced plant cover and damaged soil structure, which has exacerbated soil C loss by erosion. At the same time, increasing winter snowfall due to climate change is stimulating plant growth and altering plant composition. However, we do not know how changes in winter snow cover interact with land-use practices to regulate soil C loss due to erosion. 2. Here, we conducted a 6-year snow manipulation experiment under different land-use practices (control; moderately mowed, MM; heavily mowed, HM) to measure net changes in soil depth, soil C, plant biomass and vegetation structure. 3. After 6 years, soil C loss under ambient snow was three times greater in the MM and four times greater in the HM treatment compared with controls during non-growing season. However, deepened winter snow alleviated erosion-induced soil C loss by 14%, 47%, 16% in the controls, MM and HM treatments respectively. 4. The severity of soil C loss declined with increasing above-ground biomass (AGB), surface root biomass and vegetation structure. Vegetation structure and AGB explained more of the variation in soil C loss than surface root biomass, possibly because a complex canopy and plant cover increases overall surface roughness, thereby reducing soil C loss. Intensified land-use reduced AGB, surface root biomass and vegetation structure, but deepened snow increased overall surface roughness by promoting AGB. Hence, our study demonstrates that deepened snow can alleviate soil C loss due to land-use practices by promoting AGB. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Functional Ecology
Additional Information:
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Ping Li, Emma J. Sayer, Zhou Jia,Yuntao Wu, Meifeng Deng, Xin Wang, Chao Liu, Bin Wang, Yang Wang, Yongfei Bai, Lingli Liu (2021), Deepened snow cover mitigates soil carbon loss from intensive land-use in a semi-arid temperate grassland. doi: 10.1111/1365-2435.13958 which has been published in final form at https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13958 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1105
Subjects:
?? LAND USEPLANT BIOMASSSOIL CARBON LOSSSOIL EROSIONVEGETATION STRUCTUREWINTER SNOW COVERECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, BEHAVIOR AND SYSTEMATICS ??
ID Code:
161608
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
29 Oct 2021 08:15
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
21 Sep 2023 03:11