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Enclosure increases nutrient resorption from senescing leaves in a subalpine pasture

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Abstract

Aim

Nutrient resorption from senescing tissues is the most critical nutrient source for plants in degradation grasslands, playing critical roles to primary productivity and interspecies competitiveness. Hence within-species and among-species variation of nutrient resorption is one of the mechanisms explaining the increasing productivity and decreasing biodiversity after enclosure. Yet, the response of plant nutrient resorption to enclosure remains poorly documented.

Methods

We conducted a 6-year manipulative field study to estimate the effects of enclosure on nutrient resorption efficiency in five dominant species in a degraded subalpine pasture.

Results

Both soil, mature and senesced leaves showed significant increases in N, P, and K contents in response to enclosure. Despite some species-specific differences, enclosure generally increased the nutrient resorption in graminoids, but decreased in forbs (with the exception of phosphorus for Potentilla anserine), indicating an important difference in the adaptation of plant functional types to enclosure which may in turn strongly impact the productivity and structure of pasture vegetation under long-term enclosure.

Conclusions

This study shows the positive effects of enclosure management on soil and plant nutrients accumulation, and our results highlight the importance of among-species and within-species variations in plant nutrient resorption to explain the effects of enclosure on biodiversity loss and productivity increase in a degraded ecosystem.

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Data availability

Data will be published in Dryad Digital Repository after manuscript accepted.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant no. lzujbky-2018-3, lzujbky-2019-kb43), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant no. 2019YFC0507401), the 111 Project (B12002), the Special funds of Gansu Province for guiding scientific and technological innovation and development (2017zx-10), and the financial support from ecological restoration in the habitats of rare and endangered plants and animals as well as fungi protection and utilization in Qilian Mountain (2018-20).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-ecosystems, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730020, China

    Weibin Li & Guozhu Huang

  2. Key Laboratory of Grassland Livestock Industry Innovation, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730020, China

    Weibin Li & Guozhu Huang

  3. Engineering Research Center of Grassland Industry, Ministry of Education, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730020, China

    Weibin Li & Guozhu Huang

  4. Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang, 110016, China

    Hongxia Zhang

  5. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Hongxia Zhang

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  1. Weibin Li
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  2. Guozhu Huang
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  3. Hongxia Zhang
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Contributions

HZ and WL conceived the study; HZ, WL, GH and CZ designed and carried out the analyses;

HZ and WL wrote and revised the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hongxia Zhang.

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Li, W., Huang, G. & Zhang, H. Enclosure increases nutrient resorption from senescing leaves in a subalpine pasture. Plant Soil 457, 269–278 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04733-8

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