当前位置: X-MOL 学术J. Plant Ecol. › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
Neutral responses of plant community Ca concentration to nitrogen enrichment in a semi-arid grassland
Journal of Plant Ecology ( IF 2.7 ) Pub Date : 2021-08-25 , DOI: 10.1093/jpe/rtab092
Shuang-Li Hou 1 , Xiao-Tao Lü 1 , Jun-Jie Yang 1, 2
Affiliation  

Abstract
Aims
Calcium (Ca) is an essential nutrient for plant growth and Ca concentrations in forage have important implications for ruminant diet and health. It remains an open question whether forage Ca concentration would be decreased by increasing nitrogen (N) deposition.
Methods
We manipulated the increasing rates of N addition (2008-2015) in a semi-arid grassland, northern China. Plant Ca concentrations for all species were examined in each plot under N treatment. The Ca concentrations at functional group and community levels were calculated based on the concentration of each species presented and their relative biomass in each plot.
Important findings
We found that community-level Ca concentration remained stable across a gradient of wide-ranged N addition rates, although Ca concentration at both species and functional group levels showed negative responses to N enrichment. Given that forbs had higher Ca concentration than grasses, the increasing relative biomass of forbs canceled out the negative responses of species-level and functional group-level Ca concentration. Our results further showed that community Ca pool showed a positive but saturating response to N addition, with a threshold at the rate of 10 g N m -2 yr -1. Our findings highlight the role of changes in plant relative biomass in controlling the responses of forage Ca concentration and stock to N enrichment.
更新日期:2021-08-29
down
wechat
bug