Effects of vegetation restoration on soil quality in fragile karst ecosystems of southwest China

doi:10.7717/peerj.9456

	Effects of vegetation restoration on soil quality in fragile karst ecosystems of southwest China
	Guan, Huiling 1,2; Fan, Jiangwen 2
刊名	PEERJ
	2020-07-02
卷号	8 页码:21
关键词	Vegetation restoration Soil properties Soil quality index Karst areas
ISSN号	2167-8359
DOI	10.7717/peerj.9456
通讯作者	Fan, Jiangwen(fanjw@igsnrr.ac.cn)
英文摘要	Soil quality assessment is important for karst ecosystems where soil erosion is significant. A large amount of vegetation restoration has been implemented since the early 21st century in degraded karst areas across southwestern China. However, the impacts on soil quality of different restoration types rarely have been compared systematically. In the current study, we investigated the soil quality after a number of vegetation restoration projects as well as their adjacent cropland by analyzing soil samples. Six vegetation restoration types were evaluated, including one natural restoration (natural shrubland, protected for 13 years), three economic forests (4 years Eucalyptus robusta, 4 years Prunus salicina and 6 years Zenia insignis) and two mixed forests (1 year Juglans regia-crop and 13 years Toona sinensis-Pennisetum purpureum ). We evaluated the benefits of different restoration types more accurately by setting each adjacent cropland as the control and setting the variation between the corresponding restored and control site as the evaluation object so that the background differences of six sites could be eliminated. The results indicated that natural shrubland, Toona sinensis-Pennisetum purpureum and Zenia insignis were effective in improving soil quality index (SQI) in degraded karst cropland largely due to their higher SOC and TN content. The variation of SQI (VSQI) of natural shrubland was significantly higher than that in Eucalyptus robusta, Prunus salicina and Juglans regia-crop in total soil layer (0-30 cm) (P < 0.05), indicating natural shrubland had better capacity to improve soil quality. The boosting regression tree model revealed that vegetation restoration type explained 73.49% and restoration time explained 10.30% of the variation in VSQI, which confirmed that vegetation restoration type and restoration time are critical for achieving soil reserves. Therefore, it is vital to select appropriate vegetation type in restoration projects and recovery for a long time in order to achieve better soil quality. The current study provides a theoretical basis on which to assess the effects of different vegetation restoration types on the heterogeneous degraded karst areas.
资助项目	National Key Research and Development Program[2017YFC0506505]
WOS关键词	LAND-USE CHANGE ; ROCKY DESERTIFICATION ; ORGANIC-CARBON ; TYPICAL KARST ; NORTHWEST GUANGXI ; NITROGEN ; AREA ; EUCALYPTUS ; REGION ; INDEX
WOS研究方向	Science & Technology - Other Topics
语种	英语
出版者	PEERJ INC
WOS记录号	WOS:000544827500007
资助机构	National Key Research and Development Program
内容类型	期刊论文
源URL	[http://ir.igsnrr.ac.cn/handle/311030/162450]
专题	中国科学院地理科学与资源研究所
通讯作者	Fan, Jiangwen
作者单位	1.Univ Chinese Acad Sci, Beijing, Peoples R China 2.Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Geog Sci & Nat Resources Res, Key Lab Land Surface Pattern & Simulat, Beijing, Peoples R China
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Guan, Huiling,Fan, Jiangwen. Effects of vegetation restoration on soil quality in fragile karst ecosystems of southwest China[J]. PEERJ,2020,8:21.
APA	Guan, Huiling,&Fan, Jiangwen.(2020).Effects of vegetation restoration on soil quality in fragile karst ecosystems of southwest China.PEERJ,8,21.
MLA	Guan, Huiling,et al."Effects of vegetation restoration on soil quality in fragile karst ecosystems of southwest China".PEERJ 8(2020):21.