Responses of soil inorganic and organic carbon stocks of alpine meadows to the disturbance by plateau pikas

Pang, Xiaoyang; Wang, Qian; Zhang, Jing; Hai, Xu; Zhang, Wen Na; Wang, Juan; Zheng, Guo

doi:10.1111/ejss.12895

Cited by 23 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 42 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Third, plateau pika disturbance increases light availability for shorter plants, which may enhance their biomass. Last, plateau pika disturbance can improve soil nutrient concentration (Pang et al, 2020b; Pang et al, 2020a), benefiting plant growth. These indicate that the plateau pika disturbance can increase plant aboveground biomass in compensation for the biomass they consume.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At each site, 10 disturbed plots were selected in plateau pikas‐only areas, with a distance of 3–5 km between them. Each disturbed plot was paired with an adjacent undisturbed one, without plateau pika disturbance, with a distance of 500–1,000 m between the plots within each pair (Pang et al, 2020b; Pang et al, 2020a). Furthermore, each paired plot shared the same soil type, topography, microclimate, and alpine meadow, with no clear differences in the dominant species and main associate species (Pang et al, 2020a).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The impact of the plateau pika on the relationship between plant aboveground biomass and plant species richness

2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Herbivores can influence plant species richness and plant aboveground biomass. However, only a few studies have examined their impact on the relationship between plant aboveground biomass and plant species richness, focusing on large herbivores. This study examined the influence of a small burrowing herbivore, the plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) with averaging 150 g, on the plant aboveground biomass, plant species richness, and their relationship in the alpine meadows on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. The study used a random stratified paired sampling design to collect data on plant species richness and plant aboveground biomass across five sites. Each site contained 10 pairs of plots. Each pair consisted of an undisturbed plot and a disturbed plot. Plant species richness was higher in the disturbed plots; whereas, plant aboveground biomass did not differ in relation to plateau pika disturbance. In the undisturbed plots, the plant species richness increased positively with plant aboveground biomass. In the disturbed plots, the plant species richness peaked at intermediate plant aboveground biomass levels. The findings suggest that small herbivores could alter the relationship between plant aboveground biomass and plant species richness by inducing an increase in plant species diversity, and they should be considered for assessing the management and conservation measures of alpine meadow.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of the plateau pika on the relationship between plant aboveground biomass and plant species richness

2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Large herbivore grazing has been verified to influence grassland ecosystem services (Lu et al, 2017;McGranahan et al, 2012;Niu et al, 2010;Sun et al, 2011;Woldu and Saleem, 2000). In addition to large herbivores, tens of thousands of small burrowing herbivores usually create extensive disturbances on grassland vegetation and soil (Davidson et al, 2012;Pang et al, 2020a) by developing burrow systems (Sun et al, 2015), excreting feces and urine (Zhang et al, 2016), consuming plants (Liu et al, 2017;Sun et al, 2015), clipping tall plants (Zhang et al, 2020), and producing bare soil patches (Guo et al, 2012a(Guo et al, , 2012bYu et al, 2017aYu et al, , 2017b. Currently, a few studies have used data from one site to examine the effect of prairie dog disturbance on grassland ecosystem services in arid regions (Martínez-Estévez et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Currently, a few studies have used data from one site to examine the effect of prairie dog disturbance on grassland ecosystem services in arid regions (Martínez-Estévez et al, 2013). However, the effect of disturbance by small burrowing herbivores on vegetation and soil varies with topography and microclimate (Pang et al, 2020a(Pang et al, , 2020bWang et al, 2020a;Yu et al, 2017a). Therefore, it is necessary to use data from multiple sites to identify a general pattern concerning the effect of disturbance by small burrowing herbivores on grassland ecosystem services, which can provide information for grassland management.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of plateau pika disturbance on the ecosystem services of alpine grasslands

Chen

Yang

Bao

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Herbivore disturbance can affect the grassland ecosystem services though creating extensive disturbances vegetation and soil. This study focused on plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) disturbance to investigate the effect of disturbance by small burrowing herbivores on ecosystem services of alpine grasslands though five sites. In this study, the palatable plant biomass, plant species richness, soil water storage, soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium stocks were used to estimate the forage availability, biodiversity conservation, water conservation, carbon sequestration and soil nutrient maintenance. This study showed that plateau pika disturbance was related to higher plant species richness and soil organic carbon stock, associated with lower palatable plant biomass and soil water storage, and had no effect on total potassium stock, whereas the responses of soil total nitrogen and phosphorus stocks to plateau pika disturbance were different among sites. The palatable plant biomass, plant species richness, soil organic carbon, total nitrogen and phosphorus stocks showed downward parabolas, whereas the soil water storage showed a decreasing trend with increasing plateau pika disturbance intensity. These results indicated that the role of plateau pikas is dependent not only on the management target of alpine grasslands but also on the plateau pika disturbance intensity.

show abstract

“…Similarly, pika burrows (or pika density) are hard to surveyed based on satellite remote sensing images due to the limitations of the spatiotemporal resolution, and it is time-consuming and inefficient of traditional methods to count pika burrows in situ [28]. Therefore, only a few studies have quantified the effects of pika's disturbance on vegetation biomass and soil organic carbon of alpine grassland at plot scale [28,29]. To date, there are few reports about the relationship between pika density and vegetation species diversity at large scale, although this is critical to evaluate the role of pika.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species Monitoring Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to Reveal the Ecological Role of Plateau Pika in Maintaining Vegetation Diversity on the Northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae, hereafter pika) is considered to exert a profound impact on vegetation species diversity of alpine grasslands. Great efforts have been made at mound or quadrat scales; nevertheless, there is still controversy about the effect of pika. It is vital to monitor vegetation species composition in natural heterogeneous ecosystems at a large scale to accurately evaluate the real role of pika. In this study, we performed field survey at 55 alpine grassland sites across the Shule River Basin using combined methods of aerial photographing using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and traditional ground measurement. Based on our UAV operation system, Fragmentation Monitoring and Analysis with aerial Photography (FragMAP), aerial images were acquired. Plot-scale vegetation species were visually identified, and total pika burrow exits were automatically retrieved using the self-developed image processing software. We found that there were significant linear relationships between the vegetation species diversity indexes obtained by these two methods. Additionally, the total number of identified species by the UAV method was 71, which was higher than the Quadrat method recognition, with the quantity of 63. Our results indicate that the UAV was suitable for long-term repeated monitoring vegetation species composition of multiple alpine grasslands at plot scale. With the merits of UAV, it confirmed that pika’s disturbance belonged to the medium level, with the density ranging from 30.17 to 65.53 ha−1. Under this density level, pika had a positive effect on vegetation species diversity, particularly for the species richness of sedge and forb. These findings conclude that the UAV was an efficient and economic tool for species monitoring to reveal the role of pika in the alpine grasslands.

show abstract

Responses of soil inorganic and organic carbon stocks of alpine meadows to the disturbance by plateau pikas

Cited by 23 publications

References 42 publications

The impact of the plateau pika on the relationship between plant aboveground biomass and plant species richness

The impact of the plateau pika on the relationship between plant aboveground biomass and plant species richness

Effect of plateau pika disturbance on the ecosystem services of alpine grasslands

Species Monitoring Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to Reveal the Ecological Role of Plateau Pika in Maintaining Vegetation Diversity on the Northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About