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Coupled response of soil carbon and nitrogen pools and enzyme activities to nitrogen and water addition in a semi-arid grassland of Inner Mongolia

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Abstract

Background and aims

Previous studies have demonstrated positive net primary production effects with increased nitrogen (N) and water availability in Inner Mongolian semi-arid grasslands. However, the responses of soil carbon (C) and N concentrations and soil enzyme activities as indicators of impacts of long-term N (urea) and water addition are still unclear. We tested the effect of 7 years of a N and water addition experiment on soil C, N, and specific soil-bound enzymes in a semi-arid grassland of Inner Mongolia.

Methods

We determined concentrations of soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil total nitrogen (TN) in both the 0–10 and 10–20 cm soil layers. Concentrations of labile carbon (LC) and inorganic nitrogen (nitrate and ammonium), and soil pH were measured. Additionally, soil dehydrogenase (DHA), β-glucosidase (BG) and acid and alkaline phosphomonoesterase (PME) enzyme activities were determined in the 0–10 cm soil layer.

Results

SOC concentration in the 0–10 cm soil layer showed no response to N addition or N plus water addition, but increased with water addition alone by 0.3–15.7 %. N addition significantly increased nitrate by 46.0–138.4 % and ammonium by 19.0–73.3 % in the 0–10 cm soil layer, whereas water addition did not affect them. The activities of DHA and alkaline PME enzymes, as well as soil pH, in the 0–10 cm layer decreased with N addition, however water addition alone caused these enzyme activities to increase. Unlike the surface soil (0–10 cm), the lower soil layer (10–20 cm), was responsive to N and water addition in that SOC and TN concentrations decreased with N addition and increased with water addition.

Conclusions

The accumulation of SOC and TN in N and water addition plots may be caused by the input of plant biomass exceeding SOC decomposition. Decrease in microbial activity, derived from decreased DHA and alkaline PME activities might result from suppression effects of lower pH and decreased microbial N supply. Water availability is proved to be more important than N availability for soil C and N accumulation in this semi-arid grassland.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank R. F. Turco, Y. Ma, B. Li, C. D. Gibson, T. D. Berry, S. M. Top, D. Xu, and O. L. Miller for providing suggestions for manuscript revision and S. Yang for assistance with acquiring data of microbial biomass. We are especially grateful to U.S.-China Ecopartnership for training the PhD student R. Wang. This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (31000200 and 31370009) and the National Key Basic Research Program of China (2011CB403204).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, China

    Ruzhen Wang, Zhuwen Xu, Xue Wang, Mai-He Li, Wentao Luo & Yong Jiang

  2. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Timothy R. Filley

  3. Forest dynamics, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zuercherstrasse 111, CH-8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Mai-He Li

  4. College of Environmental Science, Shenyang University, Shenyang, 110044, China

    Yuge Zhang

  5. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Ruzhen Wang, Xue Wang & Wentao Luo

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  1. Ruzhen Wang
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  2. Timothy R. Filley
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  3. Zhuwen Xu
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  4. Xue Wang
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  8. Yong Jiang
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Correspondence to Yong Jiang.

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Fig. S1

Soil (a) nitrate and (b) ammonium concentrations (mg kg soil−1) for 0–10 cm soil in the control (CK), water-only, nitrogen-only (Nx), and nitrogen plus water treatments; x refers to urea addition rate (gN m−2 yr−1). Data represent mean ± standard error (n = 7). Letters indicate significant differences (P < 0.05) among means for the N addition with water treatments (capital letters) and N addition treatments without additional water (lowercase letters). Experiments conducted at the Inner Mongolia Restoration Ecological Research Station, Duolun County, China. (GIF 100 kb)

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Fig. S2

Correlation of N addition rates (g N m−2 yr−1) and soil pH for N (a) and WN (b) treatments at the Inner Mongolia Restoration Ecological Research Station, Duolun County, China. (GIF 2308 kb)

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Wang, R., Filley, T.R., Xu, Z. et al. Coupled response of soil carbon and nitrogen pools and enzyme activities to nitrogen and water addition in a semi-arid grassland of Inner Mongolia. Plant Soil 381, 323–336 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-014-2129-2

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