Authors: Ying Zhi Gao Qing Chen Shan Lin Marcus Giese Holger Brueck
Publish Date: 2010/12/30
Volume: 165, Issue: 4, Pages: 855-864
Abstract
Productivity of semiarid grasslands is affected by soil water and nutrient availability with water controlling net primary production under dry conditions and soil nutrients constraining biomass production under wet conditions In order to investigate limitations on plants by the response of root–shoot biomass allocation to water and nitrogen N availability a field experiment on restoration plots with rainfed unfertilized control plots fertilized plots receiving N 25 kg ureaN ha−1 and water irrigation simulating a wet season was conducted at two sites with different grazing histories moderate MG and heavy HG grazing Irrigation and N addition had no effect on belowground biomass Irrigation increased aboveground ANPP and belowground net primary production BNPP and rainuse efficiency based on ANPP RUEANPP whereas N addition on rainfed plots had no effect on any of the measured parameters N fertilizer application on irrigated plots increased ANPP and RUEANPP and reduced the root fraction RF root dry matter/total dry matter resulting in smaller N effects on total net primary production NPP and rainuse efficiency based on NPP This suggests that BNPP should be included in evaluating ecosystem responses to resource availability from the wholeplant perspective N effects on all measured parameters were similar on both sites However site HG responded to irrigation with higher ANPP and a lower RF when compared to site MG indicating that species composition had a pronounced effect on carbon allocation pattern due to below and aboveground niche complementarityThis work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China NSFC 41071207/30970509 and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG SA 359/301 embedded into the jointresearch project FG 536 Matter fluxes in grasslands of Inner Mongolia as influenced by stocking rate MAGIM We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions the IMGERS meteorological station for providing climatic data and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst DAAD for supporting the work of YZ Gao on the manuscript at Hohenheim University Germany
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