Impacts of land use and plant characteristics on dried soil layers in different climatic regions on the Loess Plateau of China

A dried soil layer (DSL) formed in the soil profile is a typical indication of soil drought caused by climate change and/or poor land management. The responses of a soil to drought conditions in water-limited systems and the impacts of plant characteristics on these processes are seldom known due to the lack of comparative data on soil water content (SWC) in the soil profile. The occurrence of DSLs can interfere in the water cycle in soil–plant–atmosphere systems by preventing water interchanges between upper soil layers and groundwater. Consequently, a DSL may limit the sustainability of environmental restoration projects (e.g., revegetation, soil and water conservation, etc.) on the Loess Plateau of China and in other similar arid and semiarid regions. In this study, we investigated and compared the impacts of soil type, land use and plant characteristics within each of the three climatic regions (arid, semiarid, semihumid) of the Loess Plateau. A total of 17,906 soil samples from 382 soil profiles were collected to characterize DSLs across the Plateau. Spatial patterns of DSLs (represented by four indices: (1) DSL thickness, DSLT; (2) DSL forming depth, DSLFD; (3) mean SWC within the DSL, DSL-SWC; and (4) stable field water capacity, SFC) differed significantly among the climatic regions, emphasizing the importance of considering climatic conditions when assessing DSL variations. The impact of land use on DSLs varied among the three climatic regions. In the arid region, land use had no significant effect on DSLs but there were significant effects in the semiarid and semihumid regions (P<0.05). The development of DSLs under trees and grasses was more severe in the semiarid region than in the semihumid region. In each climatic region, the extent of DSLs depended on the plant species (e.g., native or exotic, tree or grass) and growth ages; while only in the semiarid region, the DSL-SWC and SFC (P<0.001) were significantly influenced by soil type. The DSL distribution pattern was related to the climatic region and the soil texture, which both followed gradients along the southeast–northwest axis of the Plateau. Optimizing land use can mediate DSL formation and development in the semiarid and semihumid regions of the Loess Plateau and in similar regions elsewhere. Understanding the dominant factors affecting DSLs at the regional scale enables scientifically based policies to be made that would alleviate the process of soil desiccation and sustain development of the economy and restoration of the natural environment. Moreover, these results can also be useful to the modeling of the regional water cycle and related eco-hydrological processes.