Responses of Nutrient Resorption to Human Disturbances in Phoebe bournei Forests

Abstract

Nutrient resorption plays an important role in the nutrient conservation of plants and ecosystem nutrient cycling. Although community succession and nutrient addition could regulate plant nutrient resorption, how resorptions of foliar nutrients vary with human disturbances remains unclear. With the economic development, Phoebe bournei forests (PF) have suffered varying degrees of human disturbances in China. In this study, the leaf nutrient resorption efficiency (RE) of the PF under two disturbances (i.e., severe and mild disturbances) were investigated. Results showed that the phosphorus (P) contents of green leaf, senesced leaf, and soil were low under both disturbances, reflecting that the PF had a potential P limitation. Phosphorus and potassium (K) REs were higher under the severe disturbance than those under the mild disturbance. The potassium resorption efficiency was the highest among the three REs under both disturbances. In addition, nutrient resorption efficiencies increased with green leaf nutrient contents under both disturbances. However, there were negative significant relationships of specific leaf area and leaf dry matter content with nutrient resorption under both disturbances. These findings provide a new perspective of nutrient resorption and revealed the potential impact of human disturbances on the nutrient cycle in forest ecosystems.

Impacts of altitude on plant green leaf, fresh litter, and soil stoichiometry in subtropical forests

“…Those results partially supported our second hypothesis. In addition, NRE in this study was lower than that of the global plants (50.2%) (Vergutz et al, 2012;Chen et al, 2021b), which was consistent with previous studies (Zhu et al, 2022). Similarly, PRE was lower than that the global plant (58.4%) except at 700 m and 1,000 m. In this study, KRE was found to be higher than 56.1%.…”

“…The positive relationships between nutrient resorption efficiencies and the nutrient contents of green leaves and fresh litter were observed, consistent with the findings of Zhu et al (2022). However, this finding contradicted the results reported by Tong et al (2021), suggesting that variations in environmental conditions lead to Redundancy analysis (RDA) of NuRE, soil nutrients contents, green leaves nutrient contents, and fresh litter nutrients contents in evergreen broadleaf forests along the altitudes in Wuyi Mountain.…”

“…Similarly, PRE was lower than that the global plant (58.4%) except at 700 m and 1,000 m. In this study, KRE was found to be higher than 56.1%. However, this value was lower than that of natural forests in this region (Zhu et al, 2022). This suggested that the evergreen According to the relative resorption hypothesis, the relative nutrient resorption efficiency (NRE-PRE) provided insight into potential nutrient limitation (Han et al, 2013).…”

Nutrient resorption responses of female and male Populus cathayana to drought and shade stress

“…Nutrient resorption can transfer nutrients (i.e., N and P) from senesced leaves to other tissues and increase nutrients residence times in plants (Chen et al, 2021; Drenovsky et al, 2019; Xu et al, 2020; Zhang, Tang, et al, 2015). Thus, nutrient resorption as one important nutrient conservation mechanism can increase plant nutrient reuse and plays an important role in ecosystem nutrient cycling (Killingbeck, 1996; Vergutz et al, 2012; Zhu et al, 2022). The percentage of nutrients in green leaves resorbed from senescing leaves represents the nutrient resorption efficiency (Aerts, 1996; Brant & Chen, 2015; Yuan & Chen, 2009), which is largely influenced by soil resources.…”

Nutrient resorption and its influencing factors of typical desert plants in different habitats on the northern margin of the Tarim Basin, China

“…The nutrient resorption efficiency of plants is affected by biotic and abiotic factors, so it is not only affected by the biological characteristics of plants, but also by environmental factors (Aerts et al, 2000). Studies on the response of plant nutrient resorption to the environment have mostly focused on natural environmental factors such as latitude, temperature, rainfall pattern, and exogenous fertilization (Li et al, 2014;Sardans et al, 2017;Prieto et al, 2020;, and most of the research on nutrient resorption has focused on non-desert plants (Zeng et al, 2005;Wei et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2022). Element research has mostly focused on the study of restrictive elements such as nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) (Zhang et al, 2015;Rea et al, 2018), but less attention has been given to other elements.…”