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| Effects of plateau pika’s disturbance on soil moisture characteristics of different land surface types in Qinghai Lake watershed |
| LIU Wenling1, MA Yujun1,2, WU Yinan1, LI Xiaoyan1,2, LIU Lei1, WEI Junqi1 |
1. School of Natural Resources, Beijing Normal University, 100875, Beijing, China;
2. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University, 100875, Beijing, China |
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Abstract [Background] The plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) is a keystone species for maintaining the biodiversity on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and its disturbance has an important influence on the function of alpine meadow ecosystem. To date, however, few studies have examined the soil moisture characteristics of different land surface types generated by the plateau pika's disturbance. [Methods] The study was carried out in the Qinghai Lake watershed, northeast of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. There are four typical land surface types generated by the plateau pika's disturbance: grassland, new mound, old mound and bare land. We investigated the characteristics of soil moisture and its corresponding influence factors (including soil clay content, soil organic matter, soil bulk density, vegetation coverage, and aboveground biomass) among four land surface types, based on the continuous measurement and sampling analysis. Firstly, we analyzed the response of soil moisture to various rainfall events, and the vertical distribution of monthly soil moisture of different land surface types. Then, the redundancy analysis (RDA) was used to get the key factors leading to these differences. [Results] Plateau pika's disturbance often generated various surface types, resulted in the direct and indirect effects on the soil physicochemical properties, and then changed the soil moisture characteristics of alpine meadow ecosystem. The response of soil moisture at shallow layer to various rainfall events was different. The beginning time of new mound and old mound was shorter than that of grassland and bare land, and the changing extent of soil moisture response to various rainfall events had the following trend: new mound > old mound > grassland > bare land. The vertical distribution of soil moisture varied obviously between four land surface types during the whole growing season. With the increase of soil depth, the soil moisture firstly decreased and then increased for grassland, firstly increased and then decreased for new mound, and continually decreased for old mound and bare land. Generally, the soil moisture of grassland was higher than other land surface types, and the difference of soil moisture at the depth of 0-30 cm was the most significant. The key factors resulting in the differences of soil moisture among different land surface types included soil clay content, soil organic matter, soil bulk density, vegetation coverage, and aboveground biomass. [Conclusions] The experimental results showed that the plateau pika's disturbance accelerated the hydrological process in the beginning, and slowed it later. These results are essential in explaining the effect of plateau pika’s disturbance on water conservation capacity of alpine meadow, and could also be beneficial to the management and protection of the ecosystem in Qinghai Lake watershed.
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Received: 05 January 2017
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