Source apportionment of water use during vegetation succession on the Loess Plateau, China
Author and article information
Abstract
Background. The Chinese government implemented the largest environmental recovery plan in the 1990s, the Grain for Green Project, on the Loess Plateau to prevent soil erosion. Extensive areas of cultivated land were abandoned and then gradually restored with communities of native vegetation. Little is known, however, about the successional development of these communities and their strategies of water use.
Methods. We collected soil and root samples from four vegetation communities at different stages of succession (Artemisia capillaris, A. sacrorum, Bothriochloa ischaemum and Lespedeza davurica) in the dry and wet seasons of 2015 in the Wangmaogou watershed of the Wuding River.
Results. Both the root systems and soil-water contents tended to increase with successional development and fluctuated with changes of the dry and wet seasons. Isotopic analysis indicated that the thawing of winter snow during the dry season in April provided sufficient soil water. The vegetation communities only used the water in the 0-20 cm soil layer during the early successional stage. This range increased to 0-100 cm as the succession developed, with strong seasonal variation; water was accessed from deeper soil during the dry season, and water was accessed from shallower soil during the wet season.
Discussion. Antecedent rainfall, soil-water content and root distribution strongly influenced the use of water in all four vegetation communities. In the process of restoration and succession of vegetation communities, the behavior characteristics and water absorption strategies of the root system are the important theoretical basis for optimizing the selection of species and accelerating the speed of ecological restoration in Chinese Loess Plateau.
Cite this as
2018. Source apportionment of water use during vegetation succession on the Loess Plateau, China. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26980v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26980v1Author comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
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Supplemental Information
Seasonal variation of soil-water content in the communities
SWC(Soil-water content) also varied greatly with depth and season(Fig.4).
Relationship between δD and δ18O of Local Meteoric Water Line (LMWL), Local Meteoric Snow Line (LMSL) and soil water in April
δD and δ18O were correlated with rainfall from June to November (Fig. 5).
Vertical distribution of root-length density (RLD) in the vegetation communities
Fig. 3 shows the vertical distribution of RLD in the soil profile.
Data
Each of the data is the original data of the map. In fact, you can use Origin software to open the "opj" file I uploaded before, so that the graphics can be easily corresponding to the data, and if the typesetting needs, you can also reedit the graphics.
Relationship between root length and water uptake
Additional Information
Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Chang Enhao conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft, lead field sampling and laboratory analysis..
Li Peng conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, approved the final draft.
Li Zhanbin conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, approved the final draft.
Xiao Lie analyzed the data, approved the final draft.
Xu Guoce analyzed the data, approved the final draft.
Zhao Binhua performed the experiments, approved the final draft.
Su Yuanyi performed the experiments, approved the final draft.
Feng Zhaohong performed the experiments, approved the final draft.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The raw data/code is provided as supplemental files.
Funding
This research was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No.2016YFC0402404), the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China (No. 41330858) and the National Natural Science Foundations of China (No. 41701603). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
