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Fine root response to soil resource heterogeneity differs between grassland and forest

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Abstract

Soil resource heterogeneity has clear effects on plant root development and overall plant performance. Here we test whether contrasting vegetation types have similar or different responses to soil patches of differing resource availability. We examined the fine root responses of grassland and forest vegetation at the northern edge of the Great Plains to transplanted patches of resource-poor and resource-rich soils, using rhizotron imaging. Every aspect of measured root behavior, including root length, production, mortality, turnover, variability and size distribution, varied significantly between patch types, and most aspects also varied between vegetation types. Most importantly, differential responses to patches between grassland and forest were shown by significant interactions between patch type and vegetation for two response variables. First, root length variability was significantly lower in resource-rich compared to resource-poor patches in forest but not grassland. Second, the proportion of very fine roots was significantly greater in resource-rich than resource-poor patches in forests but not grassland. Thus, compared to grassland, forest more fully occupied resource-rich patches relative to resource-poor patches by allocating more growth to very fine roots. We report the first example of significant differences between vegetation types (grassland and forest) in root responses to soil resource heterogeneity measured in a field experiment. The relatively high ability of forest roots to more fully occupy resource-rich patches is consistent with the global expansion of woody vegetation and associated increases in soil heterogeneity.

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Acknowledgments

We thank M. Jakubowski and K. Tollefson for field assistance, V. Balogianni, B. Kishchuk, B. Brassard and D. Steinaker for helpful comments, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Faculty of Science of the University of Regina for support.

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  1. Bradley D. Pinno

    Present address: Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, Edmonton, AB, T6H 3S5, Canada

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, S4S 0A2, Canada

    Bradley D. Pinno & Scott D. Wilson

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Correspondence to Bradley D. Pinno.

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Pinno, B.D., Wilson, S.D. Fine root response to soil resource heterogeneity differs between grassland and forest. Plant Ecol 214, 821–829 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-013-0210-1

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