Effects of <i>Solidago canadensis</i> Invasion and Climate Warming on Soil Net N Mineralization

Abstract

The rapid expansion of Solidago canadensis and climate warming in southeastern China may interactively affect soil net nitrogen (N) mineralization, which may lead to plant invasion. A greenhouse simulated experiment was conducted with invasion, warming, and their interaction to investigate these changes' effects on soil net N mineralization in an ecological system. Our results indicated that the average rate of net mineralization, nitrification, and ammonification decreased with invasion, warming, and their interaction. The enzyme activities and pH showed more sensitivity in warming than invasion, and have a similar decreased trend with net N mineralization response to environmental changes, except sucrase. At the same time, enzyme and pH may play a key role in the process of net N mineralization from Pearson's correlation and redundancy analysis, especially for sucrase and urease. In addition, the lower produced of litter biomass by plants growing in pots was also an important reason for the decrease of net N mineralization rate. These results indicated that the significant decrease in substrate quality (N availability) by the increase in invasion and warming may cause the deterioration of species production in soil, which will have important consequences for soil ecology, N-cycles, and plant invasion.

The effect of nitrogen and temperature changes on Solidago canadensis phenotypic plasticity and fitness

“…Therefore, a total of nine treatments were adopted in the present experiment, including four interaction treatments: CK, N5, N12, T1, T1N5, T1N12, T2, T2N5, T2N12. (for the warming and N addition settings, also see Ren et al (2019) and Ren et al (2020). The position of the pots was randomly changed every week to reduce position bias effects (Du, Liu, Yan, Li, & Li, 2017).…”

“…The annual mean temperature is 15.9°C, with annual precipitation of 1101.4 mm, and the annual hours of sunshine are 1996.8 hr (Wang, Zhou, Liu, & Jiang, 2017). Seeds of S. canadensis (hereafter referred to as S) and native Artemisia argyi (hereafter referred to as A) were collected in the suburb and planted in the glasshouse (for details, see Ren et al 2019; 2020). After the seeds have germinated, they can be thinned to the required number of plants and then grown to a height of about 1 cm to achieve a mixed culture treatment (3S:1A, according to the field survey).…”

“…Comparison of the daily average temperature ( y ‐axes) for ambient (CK, black line) and two warming gradient treatments (T1, green line; T2, pink line) during the growing season ( x ‐axes), June 14 to September 6, 2017. The data in TC and T2 are cited from Ren et al, 2020 …”

Study isssues of invasive species of the genus Solidago

“…However, in this study, all natives are the species of the Poaceae family, so the differences may be explained by their taxonomic features. In general, the substrate quality decreases as a result of S. canadensis invasion, which may lead to a reduce in reproduction of competing species (including the factor of nitrogen availability) and a concomitant increase in the root mass of the invader (Ren et al, 2019;Ren et al, 2020a;Zubek and al., 2020). As the soil temperature and nitrogen concentration increase, the productivity of S. canadensis does so, increasing the risk of its successful invasion (Ren et al, 2020b;Zhou et al, 2019).…”

Effects of Canada Goldenrod Invasion on Soil Extracellular Enzyme Activities and Ecoenzymatic Stoichiometry

“…Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis L.) has become one of the most rapidly expanding alien invasive plants in China after its introduction from North America as a horticultural plant in 1935 [23,24]. This species has since colonized large areas of disturbed and undisturbed land in Southeastern China, including original habitats of common reed (Phragmites australis (Cav.)…”