Plant Soil Environ., 2018, 64(2):64-69 | DOI: 10.17221/715/2017-PSE

Warming impacts on carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus distribution in soil water-stable aggregatesOriginal Paper

Song GUAN1, Na AN1, Jinhua LIU1, Ning ZONG2, Yongtao HE2, Peili SHI2, Jinjing ZHANG*,1, Nianpeng HE2,3,4,*
1 Key Laboratory of Soil Resource Sustainable Utilization for Commodity Grain Bases of Jilin Province, College of Resource and Environmental Science, Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun, P.R. China
2 Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P.R. China
3 College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

A five-year (2010-2015) field experiment was conducted to investigate warming impacts on organic carbon (OC), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) contents and their ratios in bulk soil and soil water-stable aggregates in an alpine meadow of the Tibetan Plateau. Compared with unwarmed control, warming had no significant effects on OC, TN and TP contents and their ratios in bulk soil. The contents of OC, TN and TP associated with macroaggregates and microaggregates decreased, whereas those associated with silt + clay fractions significantly increased. The C:N and C:P ratios in macro- and microaggregates and silt + clay fractions decreased, with significant differences for C:P ratio in microaggregates and C:N and C:P ratios in silt + clay fractions. The results indicated that C, N and P were protected chemically in silt- and clay-size fractions under warming, which offset the loss of C, N and P protected physically by macro- and microaggregates. Both physically and chemically protected C decomposition proceeded relatively more rapidly or accumulated relatively more slowly than did N and P. Our results suggest that C, N and P distributions within soil aggregate size fractions influence their net changes in bulk soil under future climate change scenarios.

Keywords: grassland ecosystem; open top chambers; soil nutrient; soil structure; stoichiometry

Published: February 28, 2018  Show citation

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GUAN S, Na A, LIU J, ZONG N, Yongtao H, SHI P, et al.. Warming impacts on carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus distribution in soil water-stable aggregates. Plant Soil Environ. 2018;64(2):64-69. doi: 10.17221/715/2017-PSE.
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