Plant functional type effects on soil function change along a climatic gradient
2016
San Emeterio, L | Debouk, H | Marí, T | Canals, R M | Sebastià, MT
Global change modifies plant community composition in mountain grasslands through shifts in the balance of plant guilds. Above- and below-ground systems are tightly linked, and changes in plant commu- nity composition and structure can be accompanied by changes in soil function and structure. For a thorough understanding of this link, we carried out a study to evaluate the relative importance of regional variables, local soil properties, and local plant diversity on soil activity. We sampled soil and vegetation of six sites along a climatic gradient (334 to 2479 m) in the Eastern Pyrenees. At each site, we sampled patches with the dom- inant plant functional types (PFTs) in the site, -grasses, legumes and non-legume forbs. We harvested the aboveground biomass and then measured soil chemical variables and the size and activity of soil microbial populations. We performed Variation Partitioning analysis on soil activity variables and tested simple effects between three groups of environmental variables: (a) regional geographical, climatic and management variables, (b) local soil variables, and (c) local plant diversity variables. Our results showed that regional, local soil and local plant biodiversity variables accounted for 64.4 per cent, 64.8 and 15.5 per cent of the total variability of soil activity, respec- tively. However, the unique effects of the three sets of variables were small compared with the shared varia- tion, with the highest variability being explained by the overlap between regional and local soil variables (45.6 per cent of all variation including unexplained). Thus our findings suggest that plant guild effects on soil activity are modulated by regional environmental variables
Afficher plus [+] Moins [-]Mots clés AGROVOC
Informations bibliographiques
Cette notice bibliographique a été fournie par Instituto Agronómico Mediterráneo de Zaragoza
Découvrez la collection de ce fournisseur de données dans AGRIS