Effects of establishing cultivated grassland on soil organic carbon fractions in a degraded alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau

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Environmental Science

Main article text

 

Introduction

Materials & Methods

Study area

Site selection and field sampling

Laboratory analysis

Calculation and statistical analysis

Results

Above-ground and root biomass of plant community

TOC content, TN content, and C:N ratio of soil

C content, N content, and C:N ratio of plant

SOC fraction and RIC content

Relationships across LOC I, LOC II, ROC, and TOC content

Discussion

Change in soil TOC content after establishment of cultivated grasslands

Contributions of each SOC fraction to soil TOC pool

Changes in SOC fractions after the establishment of cultivated grasslands

Conclusion

Supplemental Information

Photographs of degraded alpine meadow (a) and cultivated grassland (b: 3 years; c: 12 years; and c: 17 years) selected in this study. (Photo credit: Xiang Liu)

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.14012/supp-1

Raw data of this study

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.14012/supp-2

Additional Information and Declarations

Competing Interests

The authors declare there are no competing interests.

Author Contributions

Xiang Liu conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Xiaotao Huang conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Wenping Qin performed the experiments, prepared figures and/or tables, and approved the final draft.

Xiaoan Li analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, and approved the final draft.

Zhiwen Ma performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, and approved the final draft.

Hongxiao Shi conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Lanhai Li conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Changzhong Li analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Data Availability

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

The raw measurements are available in the Supplemental File.

Funding

The work was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Qinghai Province of China (2020-ZJ-971Q), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42067070), and the Open Project of State Key Laboratory of Plateau Ecology and Agriculture, Qinghai University (2020-ZZ-07). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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