The relationships between plant community composition and soil carbon and nitrogen are essential to ecological function and soil biogeochemistry. To improve our understanding of the effect of plant community composition on soil function in climate-sensitive permafrost peatland ecosystems, a research group from Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology of Chinese Academy of Sciences surveyed plants and collected soil samples from five different peatlands in the Great Hing'an Mountains, based on potential changes to vegetation communities in peatlands under future climate warming.
Researchers found plant species diversity and richness had the strongest relationship with soil DOC and NH4+-N in both soil layers in peatland. There are strong positive correlations between plant species diversity with TC in both soil layers, between plant diversity and richness with pH in topsoil (0-15cm) and TN as well as soil moisture in subsoil (15-30cm), indicating soil moisture and pH are important drivers of plant distribution, species diversity and richness. Plant species diversity and richness significantly correlated with urease activity in topsoil and protease and acid phosphatase activity in subsoil. Soil properties (include TC, TN, DOC, and soil moisture) were important factors influencing soil β-glucosidase, invertase, urease, protease and acid phosphatase activity. In addition, β-glucosidase, urease, protease and acid phosphotase activity were influenced by available N.
These findings demonstrate that plant community diversity is linked with soil C and N turnover through soil enzyme activity. These results will improve our ability to more fully understand the linkages between plant and soil function in peatland ecosystems and enhance mechanistic understanding of aboveground-belowground interactions under climate warming.
The research paper by Yanyu Song and Changchun Song et al. was published in the Journal of Applied Soil Ecology.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929139319300976?via%3Dihub
Yanyu Song, Changchun Song*, Fuxi Shi, Mingquan Wang, Jiusheng Ren, Xianwei Wang, Lei Jiang, Linking plant community composition with the soil C pool, N availability and enzyme activity in boreal peatlands of Northeast China. Applied Soil Ecology, 2019, 140: 144–154
