Soil ammonia oxidizers play essential roles in nitrogen cycling in many forest ecosystems. Since the compositions and functions of soil ammonia oxidizer could be suffered from obviously seasonal snow cover and freeze鄄thaw cycles in high latitude / altitude region, there might be significant differences of soil ammonia oxidizer in different periods caused by seasonal freeze鄄thaw cycles. However, little attention has been paid to the variations of soil ammonia oxidizer in different key periods in subalpine / alpine regions. To determine the abundance and distribution of bacterial and archaeal ammonia oxidizers in subalpine and alpine forest, three representative forests (primitive Abies faxoniana forest, PF; mixed A. faxoniana and Betula albosinensis forest, MF, and secondary A. faxoniana forest, SF) were selected in the alipine / subalpine region of Western China. Soils were sampled in soil organic layer (OL) due to the sensitive responses to seasonal
A consensus in global ecology is that climate change is profoundly altering the process of terrestrial ecosystem. In particular, more and more attentions have been focused on the effects of snow pack on soil process in cold biomes recently, since climate change characterized by winter warming and extreme is changing the pattern of seasonal snow cover and freeze鄄 thaw cycles in the high鄄latitude and high鄄altitute regions. As yet, the results concerning the effects of seasonal cover and freeze鄄thaw cycles on soil process remain uncertainty, and little information has been available on the effects of snow pack on soil nitrogen tansformation in the subalpine forest of western Sichuan, China. In order to deeply understand the process of soil nitrogen transformation in the subalpine forest of western Sichuan under climate change scenarios, therefore, wintertime net nitrogen mineralization, net nitrogen ammonification, net nitrogen nitrification and microbial nitrogen immobilization in soils under three depths of snowpacks ( deep snowpack, middle snowpack and shallow snowpack) were measured in two subalpine forests of western Sichuan, which locates at the upper reaches of Yangtze River and the eastern Qinghai鄄Tibet Plateau. The top of soil columns sampled from Abies faxoniana + Betula albo鄄sinensis mixed forest and secondary fir forest were closed, and then in鄄situ incubated in the forest floor under deep snowpack, middle snowpack and shallow snowpack of the corresponding forest from November 2011 to April 2012, respectively. The results indicated that wintertime soil net
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