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Impacts of Short-Term Grazing Intensity on the Plant Diversity and Ecosystem Function of Alpine Steppe on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau

Livestock grazing is the primary land use of grasslands worldwide. Grazing has been asserted to alter grassland ecosystem functions, such as productivity, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity conservation. However, few studies have focused on the impact of grazing intensity on the ecosystem multifunct...

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Autores principales: Hao, Xinghai, Yang, Juejie, Dong, Shikui, Shen, Hao, He, Fengcai, Zhi, Yangliu, Kwaku, Emmanuella A., Tu, Danjia, Dou, Shengyun, Zhou, Xueli, Yang, Zhengrong
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9318276/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35890523
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11141889
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author Hao, Xinghai
Yang, Juejie
Dong, Shikui
Shen, Hao
He, Fengcai
Zhi, Yangliu
Kwaku, Emmanuella A.
Tu, Danjia
Dou, Shengyun
Zhou, Xueli
Yang, Zhengrong
author_facet Hao, Xinghai
Yang, Juejie
Dong, Shikui
Shen, Hao
He, Fengcai
Zhi, Yangliu
Kwaku, Emmanuella A.
Tu, Danjia
Dou, Shengyun
Zhou, Xueli
Yang, Zhengrong
author_sort Hao, Xinghai
collection PubMed
description Livestock grazing is the primary land use of grasslands worldwide. Grazing has been asserted to alter grassland ecosystem functions, such as productivity, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity conservation. However, few studies have focused on the impact of grazing intensity on the ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) of alpine grasslands. We conducted a field experiment of manipulating sheep grazing intensity effects on alpine steppe by surveying plant community characteristics and ecosystem functions. Our results showed that plant community composition was altered with increasing grazing intensity, and the dominant species shifted from grasses and sedges to forbs. EMF was the highest under no grazing (CK) and the lowest under heavy grazing (HG), but there was insignificant difference between CK and HG. HG significantly decreased some indicators that reflected nutrient cycling functions, such as soil available nitrogen, plant leaf nitrogen (PN) and phosphorus content (PP). Furthermore, plant diversity had strong correlations with SOC, total nitrogen (TN), and PN. The results could provide scientific bases for biodiversity conservation and sustainable grazing management of alpine steppe.
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spelling pubmed-93182762022-07-27 Impacts of Short-Term Grazing Intensity on the Plant Diversity and Ecosystem Function of Alpine Steppe on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau Hao, Xinghai Yang, Juejie Dong, Shikui Shen, Hao He, Fengcai Zhi, Yangliu Kwaku, Emmanuella A. Tu, Danjia Dou, Shengyun Zhou, Xueli Yang, Zhengrong Plants (Basel) Article Livestock grazing is the primary land use of grasslands worldwide. Grazing has been asserted to alter grassland ecosystem functions, such as productivity, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity conservation. However, few studies have focused on the impact of grazing intensity on the ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) of alpine grasslands. We conducted a field experiment of manipulating sheep grazing intensity effects on alpine steppe by surveying plant community characteristics and ecosystem functions. Our results showed that plant community composition was altered with increasing grazing intensity, and the dominant species shifted from grasses and sedges to forbs. EMF was the highest under no grazing (CK) and the lowest under heavy grazing (HG), but there was insignificant difference between CK and HG. HG significantly decreased some indicators that reflected nutrient cycling functions, such as soil available nitrogen, plant leaf nitrogen (PN) and phosphorus content (PP). Furthermore, plant diversity had strong correlations with SOC, total nitrogen (TN), and PN. The results could provide scientific bases for biodiversity conservation and sustainable grazing management of alpine steppe. MDPI 2022-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9318276/ /pubmed/35890523 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11141889 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Hao, Xinghai
Yang, Juejie
Dong, Shikui
Shen, Hao
He, Fengcai
Zhi, Yangliu
Kwaku, Emmanuella A.
Tu, Danjia
Dou, Shengyun
Zhou, Xueli
Yang, Zhengrong
Impacts of Short-Term Grazing Intensity on the Plant Diversity and Ecosystem Function of Alpine Steppe on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau
title Impacts of Short-Term Grazing Intensity on the Plant Diversity and Ecosystem Function of Alpine Steppe on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau
title_full Impacts of Short-Term Grazing Intensity on the Plant Diversity and Ecosystem Function of Alpine Steppe on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau
title_fullStr Impacts of Short-Term Grazing Intensity on the Plant Diversity and Ecosystem Function of Alpine Steppe on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau
title_full_unstemmed Impacts of Short-Term Grazing Intensity on the Plant Diversity and Ecosystem Function of Alpine Steppe on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau
title_short Impacts of Short-Term Grazing Intensity on the Plant Diversity and Ecosystem Function of Alpine Steppe on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau
title_sort impacts of short-term grazing intensity on the plant diversity and ecosystem function of alpine steppe on the qinghai–tibetan plateau
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9318276/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35890523
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11141889
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