Abstract
Our understanding of how intensified land use changes (such as conversion of annual to perennial crops) influence soil extracellular enzymes is still limited, especially at the spatio-temporal scales. In this study, we investigated the spatio-temporal patterns of five soil hydrolytic enzymes (i.e., α-glucosidase (AG), β-glucosidase (BG), N-acetyl-glucosaminidase (NAG), L-leucine aminopeptidase (LAP), and acid phosphatase (AP)) and their stoichiometry with different perennial mugwort cropping cultivation years (mugwort cropping for 0 (control), 3, 6, and 20 years). The results revealed that the activities of AG, BG, LAP, and AP first increased and then decreased with increasing mugwort cropping cultivation year, indicating the nutrient limitation under long-term mugwort cropping. Except for the activity of NAG, the activities of AG, BG, LAP, and AP showed close relationships with biotic (aboveground and root biomass) and abiotic factors (especially soil organic carbon, N content, P content, and their stoichiometry). Across the soil depths, the ecoenzymatic C:P ratio ranged from 0.81 to 0.91 and N:P ratio ranged from 0.93 to 1.03. The random forest model showed that biotic and abiotic factors contributed 59% and 78% of vector length and angle changes, respectively. The observations suggest the long-term mugwort cropping could increase soil nutrient limitation, which may not benefit for sustainable development of perennial cropping systems. The findings increase our understanding on the impacts of soil management practices (conversion of annual to perennial crops) on soil enzyme activities and thus nutrient cycling.
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Data Availability
The datasets used and analyzed in the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Mindong Chen and Qingfeng Li for their help in the field sampling.
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This work was financially supported by the Postdoctoral Innovation and Practice Base of Anyang Institute of Technology (BSJ2020021, BHJ2021007) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32201366).
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ZXZ and KPZ conceived and designed the experiments. ZXZ, XDL, YL, ZLS, and MJH performed the experiments and analyzed the data. ZXZ wrote the manuscript. ZXZ, KPZ, and SJH provided editorial advice. All authors critically contributed to the drafts as well as giving the final approval for publications.
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Zhou, Z., Li, X., Sun, Z. et al. Soil Enzyme Activity and Stoichiometry Change with Perennial Mugwort Cropping Cultivation Year in Central China. J Soil Sci Plant Nutr 23, 5695–5706 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-023-01434-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-023-01434-w