| Research Articles |
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| Impact of nitrogen addition on plant community in a semi-arid temperate steppe in China |
| Ling SONG1, XueMei BAO1, XueJun LIU1,2, FuSuo ZHANG1 |
1 Key Laboratory of Plant-Soil Interactions, Ministry of Education, College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China;
2 Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China |
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Abstract Increased nitrogen (N) deposition will often lead to a decline in species richness in grassland ecosystems but the shifts in functional groups and plant traits are still poorly understood in China. A field experiment was conducted at Duolun, Inner Mongolia, China, to investigate the effects of N addition on a temperate steppe ecosystem. Six N levels (0, 3, 6, 12, 24, and 48 g N/(m2×a)) were added as three applications per year from 2005 to 2010. Enhanced N deposition, even as little as 3 g N/(m2×a) above ambient N deposition (1.2 g N/(m2×a)), led to a decline in species richness of the whole community. Increasing N addition can significantly stimulate aboveground biomass of perennial bunchgrasses (PB) but decrease perennial forbs (PF), and induce a slight change in the biomass of shrubs and semi-shrubs (SS). The biomass of annuals (AS) and perennial rhizome grasses (PR) accounts for only a small part of the total biomass. Species richness of PF decreased significantly with increasing N addition rate but there was a little change in the other functional groups. PB, as the dominant functional group, has a relatively higher height than others. Differences in the response of each functional group to N addition have site-specific and species-specific characteristics. We initially infer that N enrichment stimulated the growth of PB, which further suppressed the growth of other functional groups.
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Received: 05 August 2011
Published: 05 March 2012
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| Fund: The One Hundred Person Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (40771188, 41071151), the Innovative Group Grants from NSFC (30821003) and the Sino-German project (DFG Research Training Group, GK1070). |
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Corresponding Authors:
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