Ye Xuehua, Tang Shuangli, Cornwell William K, Gao Shuqin, Huang Zhenying, Dong Ming, Cornelissen Johannes H C
State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
J Environ Manage. 2015 Mar 1;150:489-498. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.12.039. Epub 2015 Jan 2.
Desertification resulting from land-use affects large dryland areas around the world, accompanied by carbon loss. However it has been difficult to interpret different land-use contributions to carbon pools owing to confounding factors related to climate, topography, soil texture and other original soil properties. To avoid such confounding effects, a unique systematic and extensive repeated design of paired sampling plots of different land-use types was adopted on Ordos Plateau, N China. The sampling enabled to quantify the effects of the predominant land-use types on carbon storage as dependent on soil texture, and to define the most promising land-use choices for carbon storage, both in grassland on sandy soil and in desert grassland on brown calcareous soil. The results showed that (1) desertification control should be an effective measure to improve the carbon sequestration in sandy grassland, and shrub planting should be better than grass planting; (2) development of man-made grassland should be a good choice to solve the contradictions of ecology and economy in desert grassland; (3) grassland on sandy soil is more vulnerable to soil degradation than desert grassland on brown calcareous soil. The results may be useful for the selection of land-use types, aiming at desertification prevention in drylands. Follow-up studies should directly investigate the role of soil texture on the carbon storage dynamic caused by land-use change.
土地利用导致的荒漠化影响着全球大片干旱地区，同时伴随着碳损失。然而，由于与气候、地形、土壤质地及其他原始土壤特性相关的混杂因素，很难解释不同土地利用方式对碳库的贡献。为避免此类混杂效应，在中国北方的鄂尔多斯高原，针对不同土地利用类型采用了独特的系统且广泛的重复配对采样区设计。该采样能够量化主要土地利用类型对依赖于土壤质地的碳储存的影响，并确定在沙地草原和棕色石灰性土壤上的荒漠草原中最具潜力的碳储存土地利用选择。结果表明：（1）荒漠化治理应是提高沙地草原碳固存的有效措施，种植灌木应优于种草；（2）发展人工草地应是解决荒漠草原生态与经济矛盾的良好选择；（3）沙地草原比棕色石灰性土壤上的荒漠草原更容易受到土壤退化的影响。这些结果可能有助于选择土地利用类型，以预防干旱地区的荒漠化。后续研究应直接调查土壤质地在土地利用变化引起的碳储存动态中的作用。
