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Nitrogen Uptake in an Alpine Kobresia Pasture on the Tibetan Plateau: Localization by 15N Labeling and Implications for a Vulnerable Ecosystem

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Abstract

Grasslands are very important regionally and globally because they store large amounts of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) and provide food for grazing animals. Intensive degradation of alpine grasslands in recent decades has mainly impacted the upper root-mat/soil horizon, with severe consequences for nutrient uptake in these nutrient-limited ecosystems. We used 15N labeling to identify the role of individual soil layers for N-uptake by Kobresia pygmaea—the dominating plant in the degraded Tibetan pasture ecosystems. We hypothesized a very efficient N-uptake corresponding mainly to the vertical distribution of living roots (topsoil > subsoil). We assume that K. pygmaea develops a very dense root-mat, which has to be maintained by small aboveground biomass, to enable this efficient N-uptake. Consequently, a higher N-investment into roots compared to shoots was hypothesized. The 15N recovery in whole plants (~70%) indicated very efficient N-uptake from the upper injection depths (0–5 cm). The highest 15N amounts were recovered in root biomass, whereby 15N recovery in roots strongly decreased with depth. In contrast, 15N recovery in shoots was generally low (~18%) and independent of the 15N injection depth. This clearly shows that the low N demand of Kobresia shoots can be easily covered by N-uptake from any depth. Less living root biomass in lower versus upper soil was compensated by a higher specific activity of roots for N-uptake. The 15N allocation into roots was on average 1.7 times higher than that into shoots, which agreed well with the very high R/S ratio. Increasing root biomass is an efficient strategy of K. pygmaea to compete for belowground resources at depths and periods with available resources. This implies high C-costs to maintain root biomass (~6.0 kg DM m−2), which must be covered by a very low amount of photosynthetically active shoots (0.3 kg DM m−2). It also suggests that Kobresia grasslands react extremely sensitively toward changes in climate and management that disrupt this above-/belowground trade-off mechanism.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the KEMA research team and in particular T. Biermann, H. Coners, J. Leonbacher, E. Seeber, K. Schützenmeister, L. Steingräber, and S. Willinghöfer for helpful support before and during fieldwork and for providing important data on climate and vegetation cover. Furthermore, we are grateful for the support of our Chinese colleagues from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP). We acknowledge support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Priority Programme 1372. The KEMA research station was founded by the Volkswagen Foundation in cooperation with the University of Marburg and the University of Lhasa. We are also grateful to the Centre for Stable Isotope Research and Analysis (KOSI) of Göttingen for 15N isotope analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil Science of Temperate Ecosystems, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Büsgenweg 2, 37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Per-Marten Schleuss, Yue Sun & Yakov Kuzyakov

  2. Faculty of Geoscience and Geography, Landscape Ecology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Goldschmidt Straße 5, 37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Felix Heitkamp

  3. Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 11A Datun Road, Beijing, 100101, China

    Yue Sun & Xingliang Xu

  4. Faculty of Geography, University of Marburg, Deutschhausstraße 10, 35032, Marburg, Germany

    Georg Miehe

  5. Department of Agricultural Soil Science, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Büsgenweg 2, 37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Yakov Kuzyakov

  6. Institute of Environmental Sciences, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia

    Yakov Kuzyakov

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  1. Per-Marten Schleuss
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  2. Felix Heitkamp
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Schleuss, PM., Heitkamp, F., Sun, Y. et al. Nitrogen Uptake in an Alpine Kobresia Pasture on the Tibetan Plateau: Localization by 15N Labeling and Implications for a Vulnerable Ecosystem. Ecosystems 18, 946–957 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-015-9874-9

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