Quantitative analysis of soil pores under natural vegetation successions on the Loess Plateau

Interaction of soil water storage dynamics and long-term natural vegetation succession on the Loess Plateau, China

“…In the Loess Plateau, porosity is a key attribute of soil structure affecting the soil reservoir under natural vegetation recovery (Zhao et al, 2010). In this study, the TP and CP of the surface soil showed the same trend, which was that both of them increased with the development of vegetation succession, consistent with the results that soil porosity increases gradually with the natural vegetation succession, which simultaneously increases soil water storage capacity and soil water retaining capacity (Zhao et al, 2010;Li and Shao, 2006;Zhou et al, 2003).…”

“…Vegetation succession can lead to the recovery of deteriorated soil properties (Jia et al, 2005;Zhao et al, 2010). To control soil erosion and ecosystem degradation, China's government has initiated several vegetation restoration projects on the Loess Plateau due to its infamous erosion (Deng et al, 2012); thus, a large area of agricultural land in the Loess Plateau has been converted into other uses during the past few decades.…”

“…There is little literature concerned with this particular issue, especially the long-term change of soil physical properties under natural restoration in the Plateau. Recently, Chinese scientists have increased the attention paid to the succession of secondary forests on the Loess Plateau (Cheng et al, 2012;Jia et al, 2005;Wang et al, 2010a;Zhao et al, 2010). While many studies have focused on changes in the aboveground vegetation of secondary forests in the central part of the Loess Plateau (Wang et al, 2010a;Zou et al, 2002) and soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics (Jia et al, 2005;Deng et al, 2013Deng et al, , 2014, few studies have focused on changes to soil water following long-term natural vegetation restoration, although studies have been done on soil water in other regions of the Loess Plateau (Chen et al, 2008;Jia and Shao, 2013).…”

Imaging soil pore characteristics using computed tomography as influenced by agroecosystems

“…If the circularity approaches 1.0, the pore approaches a round shape. If the area of the pore is fixed, the more irregular its circumference is, the smaller its circularity will be (Zhao et al, 2010). CT-measured pore circularity was the highest in soil under the prairies and the smallest under row crop management.…”

Soil Respiration and Its Effect Factors at Different Succession Stages during the Growing Season of Larix Gmelinii Forest in Great Xing’ an Mountain

“…It is well known that succession and forest age can lead to the recovery of deteriorated soil properties [4][5], for this reason, it is essential to understand the succession mechanism of cognitive effect on soil carbon flux. Recently, Chinese scientists have increased the attention paid to the succession of secondary forests [6].…”