Elsevier

Geoderma

Volume 405, 1 January 2022, 115424
Geoderma

Rotation regimes lead to significant differences in soil macrofaunal biodiversity and trophic structure with the changed soil properties in a rice-based double cropping system

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2021.115424Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Rotation regimes led to significant differences of soil macrofaunal community.

  • SOC was the most important factor for shaping soil macrofaunal community.

  • The green manure and fallow fields held higher soil macrofaunal biodiversity.

  • Land use intensity reduction increased the complexity of trophic structure.

Abstract

Crop production has negative effect on the biodiversity in farmlands because of less crop varieties and intensive soil disturbance. Macrofauna are important components of the belowground biodiversity, and contribute to the soil ecosystem functions and soil processes. The response of soil macrofauna to cropping pattern is crucial for understanding the soil ecological dynamics and biodiversity conservation. Herein, we established an experiment of rice (Oryza sativa L.)-based double cropping system in Jiangsu Province, China since 2016 to evaluate the effects of rotation regimes on soil properties and soil macrofauna communities. The rice-based double cropping system included rice–wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), rice-oilseed rape (Brassica campestris L.), rice-tiny vetch (Vicia hirsuta L.), rice-broad bean (Vicia faba L.), and rice-fallow. After 3-year rotations, soil macrofaunal biodiversity and trophic structure varied significantly with soil properties. The higher biodiversity indices were found in the tiny vetch (used as green manure in situ) and fallow fields. In addition, soil organic carbon (SOC), the main factor for shaping the soil environment and regulating the soil macrofaunal communities, was improved. While soil water content and pH were selected to predict each trophic richness and density in most of the optimal regression models, changes in soil macrofaunal communities should also be considered as comprehensive responses to the soil environments (food resources, microhabitats etc.) co-varying rotation regimes. Crop rotation with lower intensity of land use increased the complexity of soil macrofaunal trophic structure. Green manure fields or fallow after rice plantation promoted soil macrofaunal biodiversity in the rice-based cropping system.

Introduction

In the past decades, the aboveground biodiversity has been paid more attention comparing with that in the belowground. However, the belowground literally supports and hides a large part of biodiversity (Guerra et al., 2020, Hudson et al., 2017, Wagg et al., 2014), and encompasses roughly quarter of all species on Earth (Eisenhauer et al., 2021). Therefore, the comprehensive understanding of belowground biodiversity dynamics and regulation mechanisms could be beneficial to land use and climate change (Edlinger et al., 2020). Soil biodiversity needs explicit consideration when establishing ecological protection policies and priorities for the future of human being, because soil biodiversity drives many processes that produce food, purify soil and water, and address climate change (Arneth et al., 2020, Briones, 2014, Guerra et al., 2021).

Agricultural intensification and land use change are major causes of global biodiversity loss and habitat degradation (Dallimer et al., 2009, Edlinger et al., 2020, Wagg et al., 2014). Rice (Oryza sativa L.), one of the most important crops, is widely cultivated on the earth. The rice-based cropping systems are dominant in south and east Asia especially, and have profound impacts on the natural biodiversity, environment, economy and human nutrition (Assefa et al., 2021, Choudhary et al., 2018, Cui et al., 2012b). For example, natural resource degradation has been found under the continuous rice–wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cropping system with intensive conventional tillage practices (Kar et al., 2021). The intensive rice-based cropping systems tend to reduce the local biodiversity (Chappell and LaValle, 2011, Fischer et al., 2017). Beyond rising agricultural products demand, a more sustainable manner to manage agro-ecosystems has been considered as an urgent need not only for now but also for the future to conserve biodiversity and maintain ecosystem functions (Dallimer et al., 2009, Guerra et al., 2021, Wagg et al., 2014).

Along with a sharp increase of food demand and a shortage of arable land, the improvement of soil quality is of importance to ensure food security and environmental integrity. Conservation tillage has been developed in the past decades for reducing filed operation, minimizing soil disturbance, and saving economic cost, which aims to obtain economic and environmental benefits (Martin et al., 2020, Silva et al., 2019). Green manuring is an effective tool for the maintenance of soil fertility and sustainability of agriculture production with the main purpose to increase organic matter and replenish nutrients, and several benefits have been confirmed such as improving soil fertility, suppling nutrient for crops and controlling weeds (Flores-Félix et al., 2019). Straw returning has also been widely used as an environmentally friendly practice to promote soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration, nitrogen availability and hydrothermal processes (Yin et al., 2018, Zhang et al., 2017). Beyond improving the soil quality, these strategies also benefit soil biodiversity conservation (Lees et al., 2016, Marichal et al., 2014, Wu et al., 2015).

Changes in tillage, fertilization, irrigation, and cropping patterns affect soils in various ways (e.g. soil nutrient availability, pH, microbiomes, and soil process) and different degrees (e.g. temporal and spatial scales) (Peerawat et al., 2018, Peigné et al., 2018, Wang et al., 2020a, Wang et al., 2020b). Variations of agricultural practices may not only affect the soil properties, but also affect the belowground biodiversity by influencing the conditions of microhabitats and availability of resources (Choudhary et al., 2018, Qiang et al., 2021, Zhu et al., 2021). Compared to aerobic conditions in uplands, SOC tends to accumulate in paddy fields during long-term flooded conditions (Xuan et al., 2012). In uplands, higher SOC can benefit bacterivores because the greater abundance of microbial communities promotes the bacterivores and fungivores (Zhong et al., 2016). The crop rotation and tillage lead to changes in nematode communities (Neher et al., 2019), and nematodes sensitively affected by the changes in the microhabitat conditions, such as soil moisture and pH (Nguyen et al., 2020). Then the variations of structural and functional biodiversity can be used as the bio-indicators of the environmental impacts of the land use change under different agricultural practices.

Among the belowground organisms, soil macrofauna (>2 mm in width) play important roles in soil ecosystem, and are also sensitive to environmental changes due to short lifespan. The variations of trophic structure indicate the adaptation and change of macrofaunal communities (Jiang et al., 2018, Lefebvre and Gaudry, 2009). In the rice-based cropping systems, reduction of land use intensity and straw return are also helpful to maintain soil fertility, and improve soil aggregate stability, and promote grain yield (Assefa et al., 2021, Kar et al., 2021). The management practices including different rotation regimes have impact on the soil ecosystem structure and functions, which was determined by the soil environments and soil biodiversity (Choudhary et al., 2018, Emery et al., 2021, Man et al., 2021). The changes on management practices mentioned above affect belowground communities substantially because of the modified soil environments, and in turn affect the soil dynamic and landscape evolution (Krishnamoorthy et al., 2014, Singh and Gupta, 2018, Wang et al., 2020a, Wang et al., 2020b).

To maintain the land quality and health, the different practices (tillage, irrigation and rotation etc.) may trigger the changes among soil properties. To detect the effects of rotation regimes on soil macrofaunal biodiversity and trophic structure, a field experiment was setup in June 2016 at a traditional rice–wheat cropping area located in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, China. In the rice-based cropping systems, different crop rotation regimes were applied. After 3-year rotation, the main soil properties and soil macrofaunal communities were analyzed in June 2019. This study was mainly aimed at the following two specific questions: (1) How are the soil properties and macrofaunal biodiversity changed with different rotation regimes? (2) What are the factors among the main soil properties shaping the soil macrofaunal biodiversity? We hypothesized that (1) soil macrofaunal biodiversity and trophic structure would be changed along with soil properties variations under different rotation regimes; and (2) the variations should be driven by the key soil properties impacting the soil microhabitats and interactions (e.g. structure of food web).

Section snippets

Study sites

This study was conducted at the Gewu Field Experimental Station of Jiangsu Coastal Area Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Yanhceng, Jiangsu Province (119.97°E, 33.16°N). It has a subtropical monsoon climate with a mean annual precipitation, temperature and frost free period of 1051 mm, 13.7 °C and 210 days, respectively. The soil is classified as Anthrosols according to the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) Working Group World Reference Base for Soil Resources (2015). The initial

Differences in soil properties

The soil properties varied among the fields with different rotation regime in end of dry farming stage (Fig. 1). There were significant differences in SOC (F4,29 = 19.760, p < 0.001), TN (F4,29 = 14.200, p < 0.001), TP (F4,29 = 3.113, p = 0.033), C:N (F4,29 = 11.627, p < 0.001), WC (F4,29 = 43.797, p < 0.001), pH (F4,29 = 14.617, p < 0.001), and BD (F4,29 = 33.235, p < 0.001). The highest nutrient element concentrations (SOC, TN, and TP) were found in tiny vetch fields, the lowest values of TN

Soil properties and soil macrofaunal communities varied with rotation regimes

In the present study, the responses of the soil macrofaunal biodiversity and trophic structure under different rice-based double cropping patterns of east China were investigated. In line with our hypothesis, we found that differences on the agricultural practices caused differences in of soil properties, and altered soil macrofaunal biodiversity and trophic structure after a 3-year experiment. Here, SOC was recognized as the key factor for variations of soil properties under different rotation

Conclusion

The present study provides insights into how soil macrofaunal diversity and trophic structure might change relative to rotation regimes in a rice-based double cropping system. Rice-tiny vetch (as green manure) and rice-fallow could promote the soil macrofaunal biodiversity relative to that in other cropping patterns (rice–wheat and rice-oilseed rape, especially). The macrofaunal biodiversity and trophic structure significantly differed among rotation regimes, which may be related to variations

Authors’ contributions

BG and ZS conceived and designed the experiments. RY, YQ, TC and BG performed the experiments. BG, LY and YQ analyzed the data. YQ, TC, AD contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools. BG, RY, ZS, and JZ wrote the paper.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31971440), the earmarked fund for Modern Agro-industry Technology Research System-Green manure (CARS-22-16), Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (01-ICS-20), Jiangsu Planned Project for Postdoctoral Research Funds (1701005B), and Qing Lan Project of Jiangsu Province. We are grateful to Dr. Guanlan Xu (University of Alabama at Birmingham) for polishing English expression.

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