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Soil properties and species composition under different grazing intensity in an alpine meadow on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, China

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Abstract

As the main form of land use and human disturbance of grassland, livestock grazing has great influences on the soil resources and plant communities. This study observed the variation of soil properties and community characteristics of four treatments of different grazing intensity (no grazing, UG; light grazing, LG; moderate grazing, MG; and heavy grazing, HG) in an alpine meadow of Sichuan Province on the northeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau. The results showed that grazing increased the pH, soil bulk density (BD), and contents of total carbon (TC) and total nitrogen (TN), and the BD increased while the others decreased with the grazing intensity. At the community level, with the increase of the grazing intensity, the vegetation coverage (R 2 = 0.61, P < 0.001), mean height of community (R 2 = 0.37, P < 0.001), aboveground biomass (R 2 = 0.54, P < 0.001), litter biomass (R 2 = 0.84, P < 0.001), and percentage of aboveground biomass of palatable grasses to total biomass (R 2 = 0.74, P < 0.001) significantly decreased, while the belowground biomass (R 2 = 0.72, P < 0.001) and the root/shoot (R/S) ratio (R 2 = 0.65, P < 0.001) increased. The species richness was the greatest at LG and the total biomass at UG. With grazing, the dominant species of the plant community shifted from palatable grasses (Gramineae and Cyperaceae) to unpalatable grasses (Compositae and Ranunculaceae). Based on the results, LG may be the optimal grassland management mode to be used in the long time in the alpine meadow of the Tibetan Plateau.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by 100 Talents Program of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Key R & D Program of China (2016YFC0501804), the External Cooperation Program of BIC, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 15175KYSB20130027), the Youth Science and Technology Innovation Team Program of Sichuan Province (2015TD0026), and the 1000 Talents Program of Sichuan Province. We thank Miss Juhua Ding, Miss Hanwei Li, Miss Peijun Ju, and Mr. Yaopu Liang for their help during field sampling. The authors give special thanks to Mr. Peng Li for his valuable comments on the figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, 712100, People’s Republic of China

    Zhen’an Yang, Yingyi Xu, Lin Jiang, Erxiong Zhu, Qiuan Zhu, Changhui Peng & Huai Chen

  2. CAS Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration and Biodiversity Conservation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610041, People’s Republic of China

    Zhen’an Yang, Yingyi Xu, Lin Jiang, Erxiong Zhu, Wei Zhan, Yixin He, Dan Zhu & Huai Chen

  3. Chinese Journal of Applied and Environmental Biology, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610041, People’s Republic of China

    Wan Xiong

  4. Center of CEE/ESCER Biology Science Department, University of Quebec at Montreal, C3H3P8, Montreal, Canada

    Changhui Peng

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  1. Zhen’an Yang
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  2. Wan Xiong
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Correspondence to Huai Chen.

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Yang, Z., Xiong, W., Xu, Y. et al. Soil properties and species composition under different grazing intensity in an alpine meadow on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, China. Environ Monit Assess 188, 678 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-016-5663-y

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