Impact of Plant Community Diversity on Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Riparian Zones

• Published in: Plants (Basel) Vol. 13; no. 17; p. 2412
• Main Authors: Li, Guanlin, Xu, Jiacong, Tang, Yi, Wang, Yanjiao, Lou, Jiabao, Xu, Sixuan, Iqbal, Babar, Li, Yingnan, Du, Daolin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 29.08.2024
• Subjects: Agricultural land; Air sampling; Carbon cycle; Carbon dioxide; Carbon dioxide emissions; Chromatography; Climate change; Community structure; Composition; Denitrification; Emission measurements; Emissions; Farm buildings; Fruit trees; Global warming; global warming potential; Greenhouse effect; Greenhouse gases; Land use; landscape diversity; Methane; Microorganisms; Nitrogen; Nitrous oxide; Plant communities; plant community structure; Plant diversity; Plant layout; plant species richness; Riparian land; Soil analysis; Soil investigations; Soil structure; Soil testing; Soils; Species composition; Species diversity; global warming potential; plant species richness; plant community structure; landscape diversity
• ISSN: 2223-7747; 2223-7747
• DOI: 10.3390/plants13172412

Plant community succession can impact greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the soil by altering the soil carbon and nitrogen cycles. However, the effects of community landscape diversity on soil GHG emissions have rarely been fully understood. Therefore, this study investigated how plant landscape diversity, structure type, and species composition, affect soil GHG emissions in a riparian zone. Soil GHG emissions were assessed by measuring the air samples collected from four study sites, which have different plant community structure types and species compositions (natural sites with complex plants, landscaped sites with fruit trees and grasses, untended sites with ruderals, and farmland sites), using the static chamber method. Significant differences were observed in soil carbon dioxide (CO ; < 0.001), nitrous oxide (N O; < 0.001), and methane (CH ; = 0.005) emissions. The untended site with ruderals exhibited the highest CO emissions, while N O emissions increased as plant community diversity decreased. All sites acted as sinks for CH emissions, with decreased CH uptake efficiency in more diverse plant communities. The Mantel test and variance partitioning analysis revealed soil microbial biomass as an indirect influencer of GHG emissions. This study could help predict soil GHG emissions and their global warming potential under future changes in the island riparian zones.