Seasonal Variations in Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus Stoichiometry of a Robinia pseudoacacia Plantation on the Loess Hilly Region, China

Abstract

Seasonal variations in stoichiometry are a crucial regulatory mechanism for plant communities that respond to environmental changes. However, the seasonal characteristics of stoichiometry in plants, litter, and soil are poorly understood, especially in plantation ecosystems. Therefore, we explored the seasonal variations of C, N, and P contents and ratios between plants, litter, and soil of a Robinia pseudoacacia plantation on the Loess Plateau in China in 2017. The results indicate that the C, N, P contents and ratios in plants, litter and soil showed different seasonal patterns. The N and P contents of tree and shrub leaves substantially decreased over the growing season, while the C:N, C:P, and N:P ratios exhibited the opposite trend. The utilization efficiency of the N and P elements by trees and shrubs gradually increased with the change of the growing season. These results suggest that the C:N:P stoichiometry of plants was more sensitive to seasonal changes than the litter and soil; therefore, the potential impacts of time should be considered when using stoichiometry to explore the utilization of plant nutrients. Additionally, the P content between tree leaves and soil and the N content between herb leaves and soil were significantly positively correlated, indicating that the growth of the tree and herb layer in the R. pseudoacacia plantation in the area was restricted by P and N, respectively. Meanwhile, the N content in the leaves between trees and herbs showed a significant negative correlation, indicating that N competition existed between R. pseudoacacia and understory herbs, which was not conducive to the effective use of environmental resources by the R. pseudoacacia plantation ecosystem. This study contributes to vegetation restoration and plantation management on the Loess Plateau and provides basic information for global stoichiometric analyses.

C:N:P stoichiometric variations of herbs and its relationships with soil properties and species relative abundance along the Xiaokai River irrigation in the Yellow River Delta, China

“…Consistent with previous studies ( Dong et al., 2021 ; Li et al., 2022 ), we found that seasonal variation of the structural substance C concentration was lower than that of N and P concentrations. Nutrient elements (i.e.…”

“…Therefore, the C, N, and P stoichiometries of plants would also vary with the growing seasons ( Sardans and Peñuelas, 2012 ; Li et al., 2017b ). For instance, leaf N and P concentrations of woody species decreased over the growing seasons, whereas the C:N, C:P, and N:P ratios showed the opposite trend ( Dong et al., 2021 ). Similarly, the leaf N and P concentrations of herbs were significantly higher in the early growth season than in other growing seasons ( Wu et al., 2010 ; Liu et al., 2020 ; Xiong et al., 2020 ).…”

Soil Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus Storages and Their Stoichiometry Due to Mixed Afforestation with Hippophae rhamnoides in the Loess Hilly Region, China

“…In this study, the mixed species of N-fixing significantly changed the stoichiometric ratios of the 0-10 cm soil layer (Figure 4), which may have been due to the susceptibility of topsoil layer environmental factors and litter decomposition [29]. Generally, soil C:N is not only a sensitive index of the C and N storage but also the quality of the soil in the forest ecosystem [30,31]. In our experiment, the average C:N ratio was 20.79 in the selected plantations, which was higher than the global average C:N of 14.3 [32].…”