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Formation of forest gaps accelerates C, N and P release from foliar litter during 4 years of decomposition in an alpine forest

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Abstract

Relative to areas under canopy, the soils in forest gaps receive more irradiance and rainfall (snowfall); this change in microclimate induced by forest gaps may influence the release of carbon (C) and nutrients during litter decomposition. However, great uncertainty remains about the effects of forest gaps on litter decomposition. In this study, we incubated foliar litters from six tree and shrub species in forest gaps and canopy plots and measured the release of C, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in different snow cover periods in an alpine forest from 2012 to 2016. We found that N was retained by 24–46% but that P was immediately released during an early stage of decomposition. However, forest gaps decreased litter N retention, resulting in more N and P being released from decomposing litters for certain species (i.e., larch, birch and willow litters). Moreover, the release of C and nutrients during litter decomposition stimulated by forest gaps was primarily driven by warmer soil temperature in this high-altitude forest. We conclude that gap formation during forest regeneration may accelerate C turnover and nutrient cycling and that this stimulation might be regulated by the litter species in this seasonally snow-covered forest.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31622018, 31670526 and 31570445), Fok Ying-Tong Education Foundation (161101) and the Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Project for Youth Innovation Team (2017TD0022). We thank Yeyi Zhao and Yulian Yang for valuable communications about the microbial data at our experimental site as well as Jie He and Liya Xu for excellent field and laboratory work. We also thank Peter Groffman for providing constructive comments on this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Long-term Research Station of Alpine Forest Ecosystems, Key Laboratory of Ecological Forestry Engineering, Institute of Ecology and Forestry, Sichuan Agricultural University, 211 Huimin Road, Wenjiang, Chengdu, 611130, Sichuan, China

    Xiangyin Ni, Wanqin Yang, Han Li, Bo Tan, Kai Yue, Zhenfeng Xu, Li Zhang & Fuzhong Wu

  2. Triticeae Research Institute, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, 611130, China

    Shu Liao

  3. Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Björn Berg

  4. Section of Biology, University of Gävle, 801 76, Gävle, Sweden

    Björn Berg

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  1. Xiangyin Ni
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  2. Björn Berg
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  3. Wanqin Yang
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  4. Han Li
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  5. Shu Liao
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  7. Kai Yue
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  9. Li Zhang
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  10. Fuzhong Wu
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Correspondence to Fuzhong Wu.

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Ni, X., Berg, B., Yang, W. et al. Formation of forest gaps accelerates C, N and P release from foliar litter during 4 years of decomposition in an alpine forest. Biogeochemistry 139, 321–335 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-018-0474-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-018-0474-6

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