Liu Hua-Bing, Yang Li-Ping, Gao Jun-Qin, Li Qian-Wei, Li Xing-Li, Feng Jiu-Ge, Yu Fei-Hai
School of Ecology and Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China.
The Key Laboratory of Ecological Protection in the Yellow River Basin of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Beijing, China.
Front Plant Sci. 2024 Dec 2;15:1467621. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1467621. eCollection 2024.
Soil organic carbon plays an important role in climate change mitigation, and can be strongly affected by plant diversity. Although a positive effect of plant diversity on soil organic carbon storage has been confirmed in grasslands and forests, it remains unclear whether this effect exists in wetlands. In this study, we investigated plant diversity, soil properties and soil organic carbon across five typical wetlands of northern China, to test the effect of plant diversity on soil organic carbon and clarified the regulators. Increasing plant diversity significantly increased belowground biomass of wetland plant communities, and both soil organic carbon content and storage were significantly positively related to wetland plant diversity. The positive effect of plant diversity was influenced by belowground biomass of wetland plant communities, soil microbial biomass carbon, and soil properties, especially soil water content and bulk density. The structural equation model showed that soil organic carbon storage was dominantly affected by microbial biomass carbon, plant diversity and biomass, with standardized total effects of 0.66 and 0.47, respectively, and there was a significant positive relationship between soil organic carbon and microbial biomass carbon. These results suggest that increasing plant diversity can potentially promote the ability of wetlands to store organic carbon in soils. The findings highlight the importance of plant diversity on soil organic carbon in wetland ecosystems, and have implications for managing wetlands to increase carbon sinks and to mitigate global climate change.
土壤有机碳在缓解气候变化中发挥着重要作用，并且会受到植物多样性的强烈影响。尽管植物多样性对草原和森林土壤有机碳储量的积极影响已得到证实，但湿地中是否存在这种影响仍不清楚。在本研究中，我们调查了中国北方五个典型湿地的植物多样性、土壤性质和土壤有机碳，以测试植物多样性对土壤有机碳的影响并阐明调节因素。植物多样性的增加显著提高了湿地植物群落的地下生物量，土壤有机碳含量和储量均与湿地植物多样性显著正相关。植物多样性的积极影响受湿地植物群落地下生物量、土壤微生物生物量碳和土壤性质的影响，尤其是土壤含水量和容重。结构方程模型表明，土壤有机碳储量主要受微生物生物量碳、植物多样性和生物量的影响，标准化总效应分别为0.66和0.47，且土壤有机碳与微生物生物量碳之间存在显著正相关。这些结果表明，增加植物多样性可能会促进湿地在土壤中储存有机碳的能力。研究结果突出了植物多样性对湿地生态系统土壤有机碳的重要性，并对管理湿地以增加碳汇和缓解全球气候变化具有启示意义。
