A Survey of Soil Enzyme Activities along Major Roads in Beijing: The Implications for Traffic Corridor Green Space Management

Tianxin Li, Linglong Meng, Uwizeyimana Herman, Zhongming Lu and John Crittenden
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Tianxin Li: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Linglong Meng: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Uwizeyimana Herman: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Zhongming Lu: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
John Crittenden: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 10, 1-14

Abstract: Soil quality is critical to the management of urban green space, in particular, along traffic corridors where traffic-related air pollution is significant. Soil quality can be evaluated by soil enzyme activities, which show quick responses to both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. In this study, we investigated three soil enzyme activities ( i.e. , dehydrogenase, catalase and urease) along the major roads in urban areas of Beijing. Results show the activities of dehydrogenase, catalase and urease in urban samples were 58.8%, 68.2% and 48.5% less than the rural sample, respectively. The content of fluorescent amino acids as indicators of microbial activities was also consistently lower in urban samples than the rural. We observed two times greater exposure of particulate material along the roadsides in urban areas than rural areas. Although traffic air pollutants provide some nutrient sources to stimulate the URE activity, the exposure to traffic-related air pollution leads to the substantial decrease in enzyme activities. There were significant negative correlations for exposure to PM10 with DHA ( r = ?0.8267, p = 0.0017) and CAT ( r = ?0.89, p = 0.0002) activities. For the urban soils URE activity increased with the increasing of PM. We conclude that the degraded soil quality can negatively affect the target of developing plants and green spaces along the traffic corridors to mitigate the traffic impact. This study suggests the investigation of integrated strategies to restore the soil quality, reinforce the ecological service functions of green spaces along the traffic corridors and reduce the traffic pollutants.

Keywords: soil enzymes; traffic pollutants; green space management; soil degradation; Beijing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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