Abstract
Aims
Secondary grasslands reestablished after deforestation in subtropical and tropical regions greatly alter terrestrial carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics and their associated ecosystem functions. However, reliable evaluations of C and N dynamics in secondary grasslands across regional climatic gradient remain challenging.
Methods
We investigated natural 13C and 15N abundance in plants and soil as well as their associations with environmental factors (including climatic, plant and edaphic variables) from 20 sites across a 600 km climatic gradient in secondary grasslands of southern China.
Results
The δ13C values in plants and soil declined with increasing mean annual precipitation (MAP) but increased as the mean annual temperature (MAT) increased. These changes were mostly attributed to the shift in plant functional group between C4 and C3. In contrast, increasing MAP and decreasing MAT had positive effects on soil δ15N values, which were mainly related to changes in edaphic factors, including soil pH, soil C and N content and soil C:N ratios.
Conclusions
Our findings indicate inverse patterns and different controls on soil δ13C and δ15N values along the climatic gradient, providing novel insights into the underlying mechanisms of ecosystem C and N dynamics in response to climate and vegetation change in secondary grasslands.
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Abbreviations
- C:
-
carbon
- N:
-
nitrogen
- SOC:
-
soil organic C
- TN:
-
total N
- MAP:
-
mean annual precipitation
- MAT:
-
mean annual temperature
- SEM:
-
structural equation modeling
- PCA:
-
principal component analysis
- RDA:
-
redundancy analysis
- SOM:
-
soil organic matter
- χ2 :
-
chi-squared
- RMSEA:
-
root-mean-square error of approximation
- Δδ13C:
-
the δ13C difference between soil and plants
- Δδ15N:
-
the δ15N difference between soil and plants
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Acknowledgements
This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31700461, 31470557, 31770563), the Strategic Priority Research Program B of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB15010200) and the project funded by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018 M642962). We are grateful to Qian Zhang, Dandan Zhang, Qiong Chen and Chunyan Long for their assistance in field sampling and laboratory analyses. No conflict of interest exists in the submission of this manuscript, and the manuscript is approved by all authors for publication.
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Feng, J., Yang, F., Wu, J. et al. Contrasting soil C and N dynamics inferred from δ13C and δ15N values along a climatic gradient in southern China. Plant Soil 452, 217–231 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04548-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04548-7