Response of soil organic carbon and soil aggregate stability to changes in land use patterns on the Loess Plateau

作者：Zhandong Pan, Xuemei Cai, Yongming Bo, Changsheng Guan, Liqun Cai, Fasih Ullah Haider, Xuchun Li, Haixia Yu · 发表于：Scientific Reports · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1038/s41598-024-82300-2 · 被引用次数：33 · 研究领域：Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics、Forest, Soil, and Plant Ecology in China、Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

Land use change can significantly alter the proportion of soil aggregates, thereby influencing aggregate stability and distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC). However, there is minimal research on the variations in the distribution of soil aggregates, aggregate stability, and SOC in soil aggregates following land use change from farmland (FL) to forest and grassland in the Loess Plateau region of China. Select six land use patterns (farmland (FL), abandoned cropland (ACL), Medicago sativa (MS), natural grassland (NG), Picea asperata Mast. (PA), Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco (PO)) on the Loess Plateau in China and collect undisturbed soil samples. These six land use patterns have similar geographical characteristics. The distribution of aggregates and the aggregate-associated SOC contents under the six land use patterns were measured at the 0-10 cm, 10-30 cm and 30-50 cm depths. The results showed that forestland and grasslands converted from FL significantly increased the aggregates (> 5 mm) content, mean weight diameter (MWD), and geometric mean diameter (GMD) but decreased the aggregates (< 0.25 mm) content. Compared with FL, the values at the 0-50 cm depth under PA, NG, MS, PO and ACL increased by 473.71-732.55%, 283.98-724.60%, 179.06-634.12%, 142.31-413.50% and 110.25-213.34%, respectively, for MWD and by 244.04-607.77%, 141.68-666.67%, 52.39-483.33%, 50.49-214.43%, and 35.23-64.29%, respectively, for GMD. Land use patterns and soil aggregate size had obvious inf...