Plateau pika disturbances alter plant productivity and soil nutrients in alpine meadows of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China
Xiao Pan Pang A and Zheng Gang Guo A B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-ecosystems, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730020, P. R. China.
B Corresponding author. Email: guozhg@lzu.edu.cn
The Rangeland Journal 39(2) 133-144 https://doi.org/10.1071/RJ16093
Submitted: 13 September 2016 Accepted: 4 April 2017 Published: 28 April 2017
Abstract
Plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) is an endemic mammal in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, and its activities create extensive disturbances on vegetation and soil of alpine meadow. Field surveys at two sites were conducted to determine the effects of plateau pika disturbances on important soil factors and plant biomass of vegetated land, and their relationships of the same alpine meadow type. Our study showed that plateau pika disturbances significantly increased soil organic carbon, soil total nitrogen, graminoid biomass and the number of plant species, and significantly decreased soil moisture and forb biomass, although they had no significant impacts on soil total phosphorus, soil total potassium and total biomass on vegetated land. Our study further showed that soil organic carbon, soil total nitrogen, graminoid biomass and the number of plant species were much higher at intermediate disturbance intensities than those at low and high disturbance intensities in the disturbed areas, and soil moisture showed a decreasing trend with the increase of disturbance intensity. Plateau pika disturbances altered the contribution of some important soil nutrients and moisture to plant biomass, and had different impact on the best models between plant biomass (total biomass, graminoid biomass and forb biomass) and predominant soil factors. Our results demonstrated that the optimal disturbance intensities of plateau pika were beneficial to alpine meadow. These results highlighted the influence of the presence of plateau pika and its disturbance intensity on key soil nutrients and plant productivity on vegetated land of the same alpine meadow type, which will help us better understand the role of plateau pika in the alpine meadow ecosystem.
Additional keywords: correlation relationship, plateau pika disturbance, plant productivity, soil moisture, soil nutrients.
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