Changes in soil microbial biomasses and their quotients over the succession of karst rocky desertification

DOI

10.2991/icaees-15.2015.116How to use a DOI?

Keywords

karst rocky desertification; microbial biomass carbon (MBC); microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN); microbial biomass phosphorus (MBP); microbial biomass quotient

Abstract

To evaluate soil fertility of karst land undergoing rocky desertification (RD), the changing trend of soil microbial biomass properties over the succession of RD were studied by investigating the stands and analyzing the soil samples with four different RD grades in the northwestern Hunan province, China. The results showed that the changing trend of microbial biomass C (MBC), microbial biomass N (MBN), microbial biomass P (MBP), and the microbial biomass quotients including the ratio of MBC to total organic C (MBC/TOC), the ratio of MBN to total N (MBN/TN), and the ratio of MBP to TP (MBP/TP) was: potential RD > light RD > moderate RD > intensive RD, whereas the changing trend of microbial communities was not entirely consistent with the succession of RD. The increased grade of RD was significantly and negatively correlated to the increased contents of MBC ( r = –0.86 ), MBN ( r = –0.85 ), MBP ( r = –0.73 ), MBC/TOC ( r = –0.81 ), MBN/TN ( r = –0.64 ), and MBP/TP ( r = –0.72 ). The values of microbial biomass quotients were influenced by the content of organic matter inputting to soil. Therefore, microbial biomass C, N, P and microbial biomass quotients might be sensitive indicators to reflect the strength of soil fertility in the degraded karst regions.

Copyright

© 2015, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lianwu Xie
AU  - Yanling Deng
AU  - Bin Wang
AU  - Haijiao Qin
AU  - Jiqian Fang
AU  - Fuxiang Cao
AU  - Lichao Wu
PY  - 2015/07
DA  - 2015/07
TI  - Changes in soil microbial biomasses and their quotients over the succession of karst rocky desertification
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Advances in Energy and Environmental Science 2015
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 633
EP  - 639
SN  - 2352-5401
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icaees-15.2015.116
DO  - 10.2991/icaees-15.2015.116
ID  - Xie2015/07
ER  -