- Title
- Impact of desertification on soil and plant nutrient stoichiometry in a desert grassland
- Creator
- An, Hui; Tang, Zhuangsheng; Keesstra, Saskia; Shangguan, Zhouping
- Relation
- Scientific Reports Vol. 9, no. 9422
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45927-0
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Grassland degradation resulting from desertification often alters the carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles within grassland ecosystems. To estimate the effects of desertification on the C, N, and P concentrations and C:N:P stoichiometry of plants and soil, we examined C, N, and P concentrations in plant tissues (leaves, roots and litter) and soil across five degrees of desertification in the desert grassland of Ningxia, China (control, light, moderate, severe and very severe desertification stages). The C, N, and P concentrations and C:N:P stoichiometry of the leaves, roots and litter differed among the different desertification stages. Desertification resulted in opposing trends between the leaf N concentration and leaf C:N ratio. With the exception of the very severe desertification stage, the leaf N:P ratio decreased over the process of grassland desertification. The soil C, N, and P concentrations and soil N:P and C:P ratios decreased significantly along the grassland desertification gradient. In contrast, the soil C:N ratio remained relatively stable during desertification (10.85 to 11.48). The results indicate that desertification is unfavourable to C and N fixation and has a negative effect on the ecosystem structure and function of desert grassland.
- Subject
- desertification; soil; plant nutrients; grassland ecosystems; grassland degradation; stoichiometry
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1407078
- Identifier
- uon:35689
- Identifier
- ISSN:2045-2322
- Rights
- © The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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