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Soil C, N, and P and C:N:P stoichiometry associated with environmental factors in two typical alpine grasslands in northern Tibet

  • Soils, Sec 1 • Soil Organic Matter Dynamics and Nutrient Cycling • Research Article
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Abstract

Purpose

Soil nutrient stoichiometry and their environmental control are critical for assessing biogeochemical cycling, maintaining ecosystem function, and sustainable development. This study investigated how soil chemical measurements such as soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) vary with soil depth in northern Tibet, and how they regulate various grassland ecosystems.

Materials and methods

Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), soil physicochemical properties, and geo-climatic factors data were collected from 57 sampling sites. Using analysis of variance and rank-sum test, we studied differences in SOC, TN, and TP contents and their stoichiometry between alpine meadows (AM) and alpine steppe (AS), and among four soil layers (0–10 cm, 10–20 cm, 20–30 cm, and 30–50 cm depth), using Spearman correlation analysis and redundancy analysis (RDA) to determine the dominant environmental factors.

Results and discussion

AM soil always had more SOC, TN, and TP than AS soil. The C:N (RCN) and C:P ratios (RCP) differed mainly in response to the type of alpine grassland in the uppermost soil layer, whereas differences in the N:P ratios (RNP) were not significant throughout all strata. These nutrients and ratios decreased with increasing soil depth, and the differences between the uppermost and deepest soil layers were significant. Correlation analysis revealed that soil properties and geo-climatic factors were more closely related to SOC, TN, and TP and their stoichiometry in AM than in AS. RDA revealed that soil factors mainly contributed to soil nutrients and stoichiometry in uppermost soil layer while geo-climate did in deeper three soil layer.

Conclusions

Our research, which highlights how soil C:N:P ratios in northern Tibet depend on background soil characteristics, can be used to optimize soil stoichiometry for ecosystem functions and sustainable development.

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Data availability

The data underlying this article will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

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Funding

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42271489, Grant No. 52168010), Jiangxi Provincial Social Science “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” (2020) Fund Project (Grant No. 20GL41), Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Mine Environmental Monitoring and Improving around Poyang Lake of Ministry of Natural Resources (Grant No. MEMI-2021–2022-25), and Provincial Research Institute Program for Basic Research of Jiangxi Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 2022YJC2009).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Mine Environmental Monitoring and Improving around Poyang Lake of Ministry of Natural Resources, East China University of Technology, Nanchang, 330013, China

    Qing Lu

  2. School of Surveying and Geoinformation Engineering, East China University of Technology, Nanchang, 330013, China

    Qing Lu, Huanhuan Fan & Xiaojian Wei

  3. Institute of Energy Research, Jiangxi Academy of Sciences, Nanchang, 330096, China

    Bing Yan

  4. Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Dongsheng Zhao

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  1. Qing Lu
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  2. Huanhuan Fan
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  3. Bing Yan
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  4. Dongsheng Zhao
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  5. Xiaojian Wei
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Contributions

Qing Lu: supervision, data curation, methodology, writing—original draft preparation. Huanhuan Fan: wring—review and editing. Bing Yan: software, data curation, writing—original draft preparation. Dongsheng Zhao: supervision, writing—reviewing and editing. Xiaojian Wei: software.

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Correspondence to Bing Yan or Dongsheng Zhao.

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Lu, Q., Fan, H., Yan, B. et al. Soil C, N, and P and C:N:P stoichiometry associated with environmental factors in two typical alpine grasslands in northern Tibet. J Soils Sediments 23, 3735–3747 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03567-y

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