Effects of nitrogen addition on root traits and soil nitrogen in the long-term restored grasslands

Guanghua Jing, Zhikun Chen, Qiangqiang Lu, Liyan He, Ning Zhao, Zhao Zhang and Wei Li
Additional contact information
Guanghua Jing: Key Laboratory of Soil Resource and Biotech Application, Shaanxi Academy of Sciences; Institute of Botany of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an Botanical Garden of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, P.R. China
Zhikun Chen: Key Laboratory of Soil Resource and Biotech Application, Shaanxi Academy of Sciences; Institute of Botany of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an Botanical Garden of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, P.R. China
Qiangqiang Lu: Key Laboratory of Soil Resource and Biotech Application, Shaanxi Academy of Sciences; Institute of Botany of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an Botanical Garden of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, P.R. China
Liyan He: Key Laboratory of Soil Resource and Biotech Application, Shaanxi Academy of Sciences; Institute of Botany of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an Botanical Garden of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, P.R. China
Ning Zhao: Key Laboratory of Soil Resource and Biotech Application, Shaanxi Academy of Sciences; Institute of Botany of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an Botanical Garden of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, P.R. China
Zhao Zhang: Key Laboratory of Soil Resource and Biotech Application, Shaanxi Academy of Sciences; Institute of Botany of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an Botanical Garden of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, P.R. China
Wei Li: State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conversion, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, P.R. China

Plant, Soil and Environment, 2021, vol. 67, issue 9, 541-547

Abstract: Fine root traits are plastic and responsive to increased nitrogen (N) deposition. However, with the restoring of the ecosystem after grain for green, little research has been reported about the response of root traits in a long-term restored ecosystem to increased N deposition. Therefore, a successive N addition experiment was conducted in a long-term restored grassland on the Loess Plateau to analyse the effects of different N addition levels (0, 2.5, 5, 10, 20 g N/m2/year) on root morphological traits, soil carbon (C) and N. Our results showed that root morphological traits (except for root diameter) firstly increased and then declined, with the maximum in the N level of 5 g/m2/year. N addition significantly increased soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, ammonium nitrogen (NH4+-N) and nitrate-nitrogen (NO3--N) with the increasing N addition level, especially in the soil surface layer. Specific root length and specific root area had remarkable negative correlations with NO3--N, while root diameter and root length density had positive correlations with soil availability N and soil microbial biomass carbon. This study indicated that plants could have the threshold response to adapt to the N addition and prefer to slowly grow rather than quickly invest and return in order to adapt to the environmental stress.

Keywords: macronutrient; nitrogen cycle; growth strategy; nitrification; available nitrogen (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://pse.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/142/2021-PSE.html (text/html)
http://pse.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/142/2021-PSE.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnlpse:v:67:y:2021:i:9:id:142-2021-pse

DOI: 10.17221/142/2021-PSE

Access Statistics for this article

Plant, Soil and Environment is currently edited by Kateřina Součková

More articles in Plant, Soil and Environment from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().