The Chengdu Institute of Biology has made new progress in the influence of soil phosphorus composition by land use change on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Phosphorus is the second most essential nutrient for plant and soil biological development, after nitrogen
.
There are many chemical forms of phosphorus in the soil, and the bioavailability of different forms of phosphorus is different, and the circulation process is also different
.
The effectiveness of soil phosphorus for plants and soil organisms depends on soil phosphorus composition, and land use change can affect soil physical, chemical and biological properties by changing vegetation cover and other related properties, and have a significant impact on
soil phosphorus morphology and distribution.
The Tibetan Plateau is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world, with ecosystems vulnerable to global climate change and human activities, and the region is highly diverse
in terms of environmental and vegetation cover changes.
Understanding the effects of land use change on soil phosphorus components on the Tibetan Plateau is of critical importance for assessing soil phosphorus cycling and sustainability in the
region.

Based on this, Belayneh Azene, a doctoral candidate at the Chengdu Institute of Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, under the guidance of researcher Pan Kaiwen, took the soils of four land use types of natural forests, plantations, farmland and shrubs as the research objects, and used the Hedley grading method to determine the phosphorus components, and studied the effects of land use type changes on soil phosphorus components in the subalpine ecosystems on the southeast edge of
the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
The results show that: (1) Land use change and soil depth have significant effects on
phosphorus morphology.
After the conversion of natural forests to plantations, farmland and shrublands, soil organic phosphorus decreased
.
Due to the reduction of organic matter, the loss of organophosphorus components in farmland soil was the highest
.
Due to the application of chemical fertilizers, the total phosphorus and inorganic phosphorus components of farmland soil were significantly higher than those of other land use types
.
(2) Under the land use mode, the soil organic phosphorus components were mainly NaOH-Po, accounting for 63.
3-73.
14% of the total phosphorus.
The soil inorganic phosphorus component was dominated by HCl-Pi, and the soil HCl-Pi accounted for 42.
74%
of the total phosphorus.
(3) Soil water content, pH, soil organic carbon, total nitrogen and calcium are the key soil factors
affecting soil phosphorus components.
The organophosphorus components were significantly and positively correlated with soil organic carbon and total nitrogen, and soil organic matter played an important role
in maintaining soil phosphorus reserves.
The results show that soil phosphorus reserves can be maintained by reducing soil organic matter loss, and the results have important theoretical and practical significance
for the effective management of soil phosphorus in the southeast margin of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The findings were published in Ecological Indicators under the title "Response of soil phosphorus fractions to land use change in the subalpine ecosystems of Southeast margin of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Southwest China"
。 Belayneh Azene, a doctoral student at Chengdu Institute of Biology, is the first author of the paper, and researcher Pan Kaiwen is the corresponding author of
the paper.
The research was jointly funded
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31961133012), the National Science Center of Poland (2018/30/Q/NZ9/00378), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (2019QZK0303), and the Yajiang Biological Species (Plant) Survey and Evaluation Project.

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Figure 1 Soil phosphorus component content of different land-use types

Figure 2 Proportion of soil phosphorus components of different land-use types

Figure 3 Relationship between soil phosphorus content and soil properties

Figure 4 Land use types in the study area