Variation of Oriental Oak (Quercus variabilis) Leaf δ13C across Temperate and Subtropical China: Spatial Patterns and Sensitivity to Precipitation

The concentration of the carbon-13 isotope (leaf δ13C) in leaves is negatively correlated with the mean annual precipitation (MAP) atlarge geographical scales. In this paper, we explain the spatial pattern of leaf δ13C variation for deciduous oriental oak (Quercus variabilis Bl.) across temperate and subtropical biomes and its sensitivity to climate factors such as MAP. There was a 6‰ variation in the leaf δ13C values of oak with a significant positive correlation with latitude and negative correlations with the mean annual temperature (MAT) and MAP. There was no correlation between leaf δ13C and altitude or longitude. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that leaf δ13C decreased 0.3‰ per 100 mm increase in MAP. MAP alone could account for 68% of the observed variation in leaf δ13C. These results can be used to improve predictions for plant responses to climate change and particularly lower rainfall

Climatic Control on Plant and Soil d13C along an Altitudinal Transect of Lushan Mountain in Subtropical China: Characteristics and Interpretation of Soil Carbon Dynamics

<div><p>Decreasing temperature and increasing precipitation along altitude gradients are typical mountain climate in subtropical China. In such a climate regime, identifying the patterns of the C stable isotope composition (δ¹³C) in plants and soils and their relations to the context of climate change is essential. In this study, the patterns of δ¹³C variation were investigated for tree leaves, litters, and soils in the natural secondary forests at four altitudes (219, 405, 780, and 1268 m a.s.l.) in Lushan Mountain, central subtropical China. For the dominant trees, both leaf and leaf-litter δ¹³C decreased as altitude increased from low to high altitude, whereas surface soil δ¹³C increased. The lower leaf δ¹³C at high altitudes was associated with the high moisture-related discrimination, while the high soil δ¹³C is attributed to the low temperature-induced decay. At each altitude, soil δ¹³C became enriched with soil depth. Soil δ¹³C increased with soil C concentrations and altitude, but decreased with soil depth. A negative relationship was also found between O-alkyl C and δ¹³C in litter and soil, whereas a positive relationship was observed between aromatic C and δ¹³C. Lower temperature and higher moisture at high altitudes are the predominant control factors of δ¹³C variation in plants and soils. These results help understand C dynamics in the context of global warming.</p></div

Ester Linked Fatty Acid (ELFA) method should be used with caution for interpretating soil microbial communities and their relationships with environmental variables in forest soils.

As an alternative for phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis, a simpler ester linked fatty acid (ELFA) analysis has been developed to characterize soil microbial communities. However, few studies have compared the two methods in forest soils where the contribution of nonmicrobial sources may be larger than that of microbial sources. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the two methods yield similar relationships of microbial biomass and composition with environmental variables. Here, we compared PLFA and ELFA methods with respect to microbial biomass and composition and their relationships with environmental variables in six oriental oak (Quercus variabilis) forest sites along a 1500-km latitudinal gradient in East China. We found that both methods had a low sample-to-sample variability and successfully separated overall community composition of sites. However, total, bacterial, and fungal biomass, the fungal-to-bacterial ratio, and the gram-positive to gram-negative bacteria ratio were not significantly or strongly correlated between the two methods. The relationships of these microbial properties with environmental variables (pH, precipitation, and clay) greatly differed between the two methods. Our study indicates that despite its simplicity, the ELFA method may not be as feasible as the PLFA method for investigating microbial biomass and composition and for identifying their dominant environmental drivers, at least in forest soils

Surface soil organic carbon in temperate and sub-tropical oriental oak stands of East China

Forest ecosystems contain large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) which is a major component of biogeochemical cycles that may be sensitive to environmental change. We examined the influence of soil properties and climatic factors on the quantity and degree of decomposition of SOC for organic and surface mineral horizons in seven oriental oak forest sites along a latitudinal gradient in East China. Lacking Oa horizons, the two southernmost sites contained lower amounts of SOC in the forest floor horizon but otherwise latitudinal trends were not consistent. The SOC stock in the 0-10 cm mineral horizon exhibited no clear trend along the gradient and had a negative association with clay + silt content. Based on higher alkyl/O-alkyl ratio and alkyl/methoxyl ratio, the SOC at the 0-10 cm depth appeared to be relatively more decomposed in three of the four southern sub-tropical sites. However, the degree of SOC degradation also decreased strongly with increasing soil pH. Soil OC exhibited increases in δ13C, δ15N and decreases in C/N with depth for all the seven sites, indicating an increase in its extent of decomposition. Our analysis indicated that the A/M ratio from NMR provided the best indication of the extent of SOC degradation along the latitudinal transect whereas the elemental and isotopic composition better reflected patterns with soil depth.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Evaluation of spectral pretreatments, spectral range, and regression methods for quantitative spectroscopic analysis of soil organic carbon composition

<p>Although there is an increasing interest in using infrared spectroscopy for the simple, rapid, and inexpensive prediction of soil organic carbon content, few studies have used this technique to measure organic carbon chemistry. In this paper, based on both near-infrared and mid-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, we compared the use of instrumentation, spectral pretreatment, and regression method for the prediction of three parameters related to organic carbon content, one related to isotopic composition, and five related to organic carbon chemistry. A total of 140 soil samples collected from seven oriental oak forest sites across East China were used as the data set for the calibration-validation procedure. Calibrations using sample set partitioning based on joint x-y distances method significantly outperformed those using Kennard-Stone method. Compared to models using linear method (i.e., partial least squares), those using non-linear regression method (i.e., support vector machines) greatly improved the prediction precision of the alkyl-to-O-alkyl ratio and performed slightly better for the other organic carbon chemical compositions. Instrumentation had a large effect as mid-infrared models had higher average prediction accuracies than near-infrared models. We finally proposed a model using second derivative preprocessing, joint x-y distances based sample set partitioning, mid-infrared spectra, and support vector machines regression to quantify organic carbon chemistry in this study. The results are helpful for the further study of soil composition measurement.</p

Changes of Ecosystem Services and Landscape Patterns in Mountainous Areas: A Case Study in the Mentougou District in Beijing

Land use types have been strongly modified across mountainous areas. This has substantially altered the patterns and processes of ecosystems and the components of ecosystem services (ESs), and could in turn impact the sustainable development. In the mountainous Mentougou district of Beijing, we explored the changes in land use type (cropland, orchard, forested land, scrubland, grassland, bare land, water bodies, wasteland and built-up land), landscape patterns and ESs as well as their interactions during the past 30 years (1985&ndash;2014). The ESs included water yield (WY), carbon stocks (CS) and soil retention rate (SR). The results showed that 23.65% of the land use changed and the wasteland decreased by 80.87%. As for ESs, WY decreased by 47.32% since the year 2000, probably due to the increases in temperature and evapotranspiration. Although the decrease of forested land led to the decrease of CS, the increase of vegetation coverage improved SR. CS decreased by 0.99%from 1990 to 2014, and SR increased by 1.38% from 1985 to 2014. Landscape patterns became fragmented and dispersed, and MPS and CS, SHDI and SR were significantly negatively correlated. IJI and CS was positively correlated. This indicated that landscape patterns were highly correlated with ESs. In order to maintain the sustainable development of ESs, we should not only plan land use types, but also consider the rationality of landscape patterns

Chronic nitrogen deposition drives microbial community change and disrupts bacterial-fungal interactions along a subtropical urbanization gradient

Microbial responses to nitrogen (N) enrichment under chronic ambient N deposition conditions are understudied, especially in subtropical forests which are often not limited by N. We investigated variation in subtropical forest soil microbial biomass and composition, bacterial-fungal interactions (BFI), and their linkages to N cycling along a gradient of high-rate N deposition in Shanghai, China (estimated N deposition > 40 ~ 100 kg N ha-1 yr-1). In contrast to global and temperate findings, arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal biomass and the ratio of AM to saprotrophic fungi increased with ammonium, indicating possibly increased P limitation following N enrichment in this subtropical ecosystem. Positive BFI (positive relationships between a particular fungal OTU and bacterial OTU) mostly decreased (by >85%) with increasing N availability, as did negative BFI (by > 85%), suggesting that bacterial-fungal cooperation and competition both tended to weaken under nutrient-rich conditions. Ammonium and nitrate were significantly related to overall microbial community composition and microorganisms at different taxonomic levels. Increasing ammonium seemed to favor taxa from bacterial phyla Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Nitrospirae. Most pathogenic fungal OTUs increased with nitrate. Other microbial groups and taxa involved in litter decomposition and N cycling also had significant relationships with ammonium and/or nitrate. We found that N availability may drive significant microbial community change even when present in excess. Overall, we observed strong microbial linkages to N availability in subtropical forests under chronic high-rate N deposition, and specific relationships were often contrary to previous observations from temperate N addition experiments.This is a manuscript of an article published as Yu, Wenjuan, Steven J. Hall, Haoyan Hu, Somak Dutta, Quanxin Miao, Jiaojiao Wang, and Hongzhang Kang. "Chronic nitrogen deposition drives microbial community change and disrupts bacterial-fungal interactions along a subtropical urbanization gradient." Soil Biology and Biochemistry 169 (2022): 108676. doi:10.1016/j.soilbio.2022.108676. Posted with permission. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License

Global pattern of leaf litter nitrogen and phosphorus in woody plants

Forest ecosystems exert an important influence on global biogeochemical cycles. A global dataset of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations in leaf- litter of woody plants was compiled from the literature. Among the 677 data sets, 482 included P concentrations and the N:P ratio. At a global scale, the mean leaf-litter N and P and N:P ratio were 10.9 mg g-1, 0.85 mg g-1 and 18.3, respectively. Leaf-litter N and P were significantly correlated. When the data was grouped by continents, the highest mean N was found in Africa (19.5 mg g-1), and the lowest in North America (8.18 mg g-1). P was significantly smaller in the Asian Islands (Japan and Malaysia, 0.44 mg g-1) than on the Asian mainland. For the global dataset, leaf-litter N increased linearly with mean annual temperature and annual precipitation and decreased with latitude. Although leaf- litter P showed no significant relationship with temperature, it declined linearly with precipitation and there was a convex quadratic relationship with latitude. For the global dataset and also for different functional groups (e.g. shrubs, evergreen broadleaf, deciduous broadleaf, and conifers) the leaf-litter N:P ratio generally followed a positive linear relationship with temperature and precipitation, and showed a concave quadratic response with latitude. The differences in leaf-litter N:P ratio among functional groups and among continents should be taken into account when modeling biogeochemical cycles in different regions as well as on a global scale

Oldest pre-school age children cognitive interest formation during the pedagogical process

The biogeographical relationships between far-separated populations, in particular, those in the mainland and islands, remain unclear for widespread species in eastern Asia where the current distribution of plants was greatly influenced by the Quaternary climate. Deciduous Oriental oak (Quercus variabilis) is one of the most widely distributed species in eastern Asia. In this study, leaf material of 528 Q. variabilis trees from 50 populations across the whole distribution (Mainland China, Korea Peninsular as well as Japan, Zhoushan and Taiwan Islands) was collected, and three cpDNA intergenic spacer fragments were sequenced using universal primers. A total of 26 haplotypes were detected, and it showed a weak phylogeographical structure in eastern Asia populations at species level, however, in the central-eastern region of Mainland China, the populations had more haplotypes than those in other regions, with a significant phylogeographical structure (N-ST = 0.751 &gt; G(ST) = 0.690, P &lt; 0.05). Q. variabilis displayed high interpopulation and low intrapopulation genetic diversity across the distribution range. Both unimodal mismatch distribution and significant negative Fu's F-S indicated a demographic expansion of Q. variabilis populations in East Asia. A fossil calibrated phylogenetic tree showed a rapid speciation during Pleistocene, with a population augment occurred in Middle Pleistocene. Both diversity patterns and ecological niche modelling indicated there could be multiple glacial refugia and possible bottleneck or founder effects occurred in the southern Japan. We dated major spatial expansion of Q. variabilis population in eastern Asia to the last glacial cycle(s), a period with sea-level fluctuations and land bridges in East China Sea as possible dispersal corridors. This study showed that geographical heterogeneity combined with climate and sea-level changes have shaped the genetic structure of this wide-ranging tree species in East Asia