Messerschmidia sibirica Linn, Siberian sea rosemary, may be useful in the restoration and protection of sand dunes. We explored its ability to withstand varying levels of sand burial in the Yan Tai coastal dune in the spring and summer of 2009 and 2010. Four levels of sand burial treatments were set up: no鄄sand burial (control) , light sand burial (1 / 3 of plant height) , moderate sand burial (2 / 3 of plant height) and severe sand burial (plant fully covered by sand). Changes in soil temperature, soil moisture, fresh weight (FW) , dry weight (DW) , relative plant height, plasma membrane permeability, MDA content, osmotic regulation, and activity of antioxidant enzymes in the leaves of plants in different levels of sand burial were investigated to elucidate the strategies used to maintain physiological and biochemical processes during growth in the different environments. Soil temperatures below sand decreased while soil water content increased with increasing levels of sand burial. Plants in light and moderate sand burials were taller than controls. In
There is a great deal of literatures on the effects of sand burial upon the survival and growth of desert plants, but the physiological and ecological adaption of desert plants to sand burial have as yet rarely been studied. Artemisia halodendron is widely distributed in the semiarid deserts of China and is a dominant species in semi鄄moving dune vegetation.In order to understand the ecological and physiological adaptation of prammophytes to sand burial,,changes of survival rate, plant height, biomass, osmotic regulation substances, protective enzymes and membrane permeability of A. halodendron in different sand burial depths were studies during 2010-2011 in the Horqin Sand Land of Inner Mongolia. The experiment included ten burial treatments: buried to 0% ( CK, no burial) , 25% ( A) , 50% ( B) , 75% ( C) , 100% ( D) , 125% ( E) , 150% ( F ) , 175% ( G ) and 200% ( H ) and 225% ( I ) of seedling height. The results showed that 1 ) A.halodendron had a stronger ability to withstand sand burial stress, with some plants still surviving even if buried to a depth reaching 200% of the seedling heights. Although seedling growth was inhibited significantly once the depth of sand burial reached 50% of seedling height, seedling survive did not decrease significantly until the burial depth exceeded 100% of seedling height; 2 ) MDA content was significantly lower in the partial sand burial treatments compared to CK, but http: / / www.ecologica.cn membrane permeability did not increase significantly. After being subjected to complete sand burial, MDA content was still lower in most the treatments compared to CK, while membrane permeability increased significantly. Sand burial did not produce water stress in the seedlings, a major mechanism causing decreased MDA content is that the darkness, hypoxia and low temperature inhibit production of oxygen free radicals and membrane lipid peroxidation; 3) Compared with CK, SOD activity was significantly lower in all sand burial treatments except for treatments D and H, POD activity was higher in all sand burial treatments except treatment D, and CAT activity showed no significant changes with any of the sand burial treatments except for being elevated in treatments C and D. In general, POD activity increased when the activities of SOD and CAT decreased, and SOD and CAT activities increased when POD activity decreased. MDA content had a positive correlation with SOD and POD and a negative correlation with CAT. These results suggested that although there was a complementary interplay among the three enzymes, POD played a central role and SOD and CAT played supporting roles in scavenging active oxygen and minimizing cell membrane damage; 4) When subjected to partial burial with sand, proline content showed no significant changes and the soluble sugar content decreased significantly compared to CK. After sand burial exceeded the seedling height, proline content increased significantly; although soluble sugar content increased, the difference from CK did not reach a significant level. The res...
Agriophyllum squarrosum is an annual psammophyte species and wildly distributed in all deserts and sand lands in China. Changes of plant height, survival rate, photosynthetic rate ( Pn) , transpiration rate ( Tr) , stomatal conductance ( Gs) and water use efficiency ( WUE) of A. squarrosum seedlings was measured in a sand burial experiment during 2010-2011 in Horqin Sand Land of Inner Mongolia to understand effect of sand burial on the growth, photosynthesis and transpiration of annual psammophyte seedlings. The experiment included ten burial treatments: buried to 0% ( CK, no burial) , 25% ( A) , 50% ( B) , 75% ( C) , 100% ( D) , 133% ( E) , 166% ( F) , 200% ( G) , 233% ( H) and 266% ( I) of seedling height. The results showed that A. squarrosum had a strong ability to withstand sand burial. The survival rate and the plant height of A. squarrosum seedlings increased significantly at 25% burial depth of the seedling height. When subjected to sand burial at 50%-100%, the difference was not significant between the sand鄄buried treatments and the none鄄sand buried CK although the plant height and the survival rate decreased. The survival rate and the plant height decreased significantly only when the burial depth exceeded the height of the seedlings, but some individuals still kept survived when the burial depth was 266% of the seedling height. Buried by sand to the fifth day, the photosynthesis rate of A. squarrosum seedlings decreased slowly, the transpiration rate and the stomatal conductance and the water use efficiency
Changes in soil macro鄄fauna community structure, as a major aspect of biological processes of desertification, are very important for us to understand the laws of biological degradation in sandy grassland and to take proper policy to desertification control. Meantime, it is very important for the restoration of soil faunal diversity in desertification, which further beneficial for the fixation of mobile sand land and desertification control. A survey of soil macro鄄faunal community was conducted by hand sorting in five habitats which represented various desertification stages, such as mobile sand land, semi鄄mobile sand land, semi鄄fixed sand land, fixed sand land and inter鄄dune land. The relation of soil faunal diversity and biomass to desertification was analyzed to assess the influences of desertification development on biological processes in Horqin Sand Land. According to the classification of soil macro鄄fauna, there were 36 faunal groups which belonged to 32 families and 8 orders. The dominant group was Formicidae with 22 common groups accounting for 93. 33% of the total, and with 13 rare groups accounting for 6. 67% of the total. It was shown that there was a significantly lower abundance, group richness and diversity of soil macro鄄faunal community in mobile sand land than in other four habitats (P<0. 05) , while no significant differences (P>0. 05) were found in soil faunal abundance, group richness and diversity between semi鄄mobile
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