Seasonal Variation in Soil and Herbage CO2 Efflux for a Sheep-Grazed Alpine Meadow on the North-East Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and Estimated Net Annual CO2 Exchange
The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is a vast geographic area currently subject to climate warming. Improved knowledge of the CO 2 respiration dynamics of the Plateau alpine meadows and of the impact of grazing on CO 2 fluxes is highly desirable. Such information will assist land use planning. We measured s...
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Published in | Frontiers in plant science Vol. 13; p. 860739 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Frontiers Media S.A
02.06.2022
|
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is a vast geographic area currently subject to climate warming. Improved knowledge of the CO
2
respiration dynamics of the Plateau alpine meadows and of the impact of grazing on CO
2
fluxes is highly desirable. Such information will assist land use planning. We measured soil and vegetation CO
2
efflux of alpine meadows using a closed chamber technique over diurnal cycles in winter, spring and summer. The annual, combined soil and plant respiration on ungrazed plots was 28.0 t CO
2
ha
−1
a
−1
, of which 3.7 t ha
−1
a
−1
occurred in winter, when plant respiration was undetectable. This suggests winter respiration was driven mainly by microbial oxidation of soil organic matter. The winter respiration observed in this study was sufficient to offset the growing season CO
2
sink reported for similar alpine meadows in other studies. Grazing increased herbage respiration in summer, presumably through stimulation of gross photosynthesis. From limited herbage production data, we estimate the sustainable yield of these meadows for grazing purposes to be about 500 kg herbage dry matter ha
−1
a
−1
. Addition of photosynthesis data and understanding of factors affecting soil carbon sequestration to more precisely determine the CO
2
balance of these grasslands is recommended. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Edited by: Huakun Zhou, Key Laboratory of Restoration Ecology in Cold Regions, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology (CAS), China Reviewed by: Amber Churchill, University of Minnesota, United States; Roxana Vidican, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca, Romania This article was submitted to Functional Plant Ecology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Plant Science |
ISSN: | 1664-462X 1664-462X |
DOI: | 10.3389/fpls.2022.860739 |