Abstract
In different plant community types, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus allocation is strongly influenced by environmental factors and differences in community composition. On the horizontal water gradient from west to east in the northern Tibetan Plateau, differences in water gradients alter community composition and nutrient distribution. In this study, the effects of community differences on nutrient cycling under different water conditions were analyzed in the northern Tibetan Plateau. The effects of community changes on element distribution under different precipitation gradients were analyzed in 19 plots along horizontal gradients from west to east. Plant community coverage increased from 2.4 to 95.6%; there was no significant difference in biomass among different communities. α-Diversity increased gradually from west to east community diversity, and soil water content was significantly positively correlated. The carbon content in the community decreased with the increase of water gradient from west to east, whereas community nitrogen and phosphorus contents increased. As a result, there was a significant negative correlation between C/N (carbon/nitrogen) and C/P (carbon/phosphorus) in the community and soil water content. Soil organic carbon varied significantly among different community types, and soil total phosphorus varied among geographical regions. The difference of soil carbon and phosphorus resulted in the increase of soil C/P (carbon/phosphorus) but decrease of community C/P (carbon/phosphorus). Therefore, phosphorus limitation on plant growth was most prominent in the east of northern Tibetan Plateau. In the northern Tibetan Plateau, changes along a water gradient directly affected plant community composition and distribution and thus changed distributions of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus contents between plants and soil.
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Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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This work was financially supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (2019QZKK0302-02) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42171066, 41877420).
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XL conceived and designed the experiments; AZ wrote the manuscript; JY, YZ, and FZ carried out the experiments; JY and AZ analyzed the data and contributed to the discussion.
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Zhang, A., Yin, J., Li, X. et al. Plant Community Characteristics and Responses of C, N, and P to Different Water Gradients in Northern Tibetan Plateau. J Soil Sci Plant Nutr 24, 483–496 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-023-01559-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-023-01559-y