Vertical and seasonal changes in soil carbon pools to vegetation degradation in a wet meadow on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

ABSTRACT: Wet meadows provide opportunities to decrease carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) released into the atmosphere by increasing the soil organic carbon (SOC) stored in wetland systems. Although wet meadows serve as the most important and stable C sinks, there has been very few investigations on the seasonal distributions of SOC fractions in high-altitude wet meadows. Here, we studied the effects of four vegetation degradation levels, non-degraded (ND), lightly degraded (LD), moderately degraded (MD), and heavily degraded (HD), on the measured vertical and seasonal changes of SOC and its different fractions. Among these vegetation degradation levels, 0-10 and 10-20 cm soil depths in ND plots had significantly higher SOC contents than the other degradation levels had th

SUBMITTER: Wu J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8192520 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature