Post-agricultural restoration of soil organic carbon pools across a climate gradient
Item
-
Title
Post-agricultural restoration of soil organic carbon pools across a climate gradient
CATENA
-
Creator
Yidong Wang et al.
Dongmei Xue
Ning Hu
Yilai Lou
Qingzhong Zhang
Limin Zhang
Ping Zhu
Hongjun Gao
Shuiqing Zhang
Huimin Zhang
Dongchu Li
Zhaoliang Song
Irina Kurganova
Yakov Kuzyakov
Zhong-Liang Wang
-
Subject
Land use
Natural vegetation restoration
Particulate organic matter
Physical and biochemical protection
Soil organic matter fractionation
-
doi
10.1016/j.catena.2020.105138
-
Abstract
Post-agricultural natural restoration is a worldwide strategy for eco-environmental sustainability. However, it is unclear how it affects soil organic carbon (SOC) pools and composition among soil types across climate gradient. Here, we investigated 23-year post-agricultural restorations of SOC in three soils: Luvic Phaeozem, Calcaric Cambisol and Ferralic Cambisol typical for mid-temperate, warm-temperate and subtropical zones, respectively. Six SOC fractions with different protection mechanisms (non-protected, physically, chemically, biochemically, physico-chemically and physico-biochemically) were separated. Compared with pre-restoration in 1990, post-agricultural restoration rebuilt SOC similarly (+68–+91%) among the three soils despite of different SOC background. Compared with continuous cultivation, post-agricultural restoration increased total SOC pools in all the three soils (+33–+60%) mainly because of the increments of non-protected pool (coarse particulate organic C, cPOC). However, the pure physically, chemically, and biochemically protected SOC fractions were less sensitive to post-agricultural restoration. The physico-biochemically protected SOC was hampered by restoration in the two temperate soils but remained stable in the subtropical soil, suggesting a divergent self-restoring trend. Positive correlations of the total SOC and most fractions with wetness (precipitation/temperature ratio) demonstrated the climate dependency of SOC. In conclusion, post-agricultural natural restoration builds up SOC pool mainly due to the cPOC increment and shifts SOC composition towards more easily available C in three soils across the climatic gradient.
