Abstract
Background and Aims
Roots are of critical importance to plants due to their role in absorbing soil water and nutrients and adapting to ever-changing environmental conditions. Grazing changes plant and soil conditions and can affect root growth and resource utilization strategies. However, it is still unclear how grazing intensity affects plant root traits in desert steppes, especially by altering soil resource availability.
Methods
Here, we studied the effect of four levels of grazing intensity, including no grazing (CK), light grazing (LG), moderate grazing (MG), and heavy grazing (HG), on the root traits of Stipa breviflora and soil physical, chemical, and microbial properties in a desert steppe dominated by S. breviflora under in Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia, China.
Results
Compared to the CK treatment, all grazing treatments significantly reduced root diameter, and increased root length density and root-to-shoot ratio, but did not affect root nitrogen concentration and tissue density. The light grazing treatment significantly increased the root fractal dimension, root fractal abundance, and root biomass. The heavy grazing treatment significantly increased specific root length and root fractal abundance. Principal component analysis revealed that grazing influenced the root-mycorrhizal “collaboration” gradient, shifting root resources utilization strategies from “outsourcing” in the CK to “do-it-yourself” in the grazed plots. Structural equation modeling showed that shifts in root traits were mainly associated with changes in soil pH, ammonium nitrogen availability, and microbial diversity under grazing.
Conclusions
Under increasing grazing intensity, S. breviflora adapted to higher soil pH and lower nitrogen availability by producing longer, thinner, more branching roots and a “do-it-yourself” strategy. Our results suggest that changes in root traits play a very important role in the adaption of a dominant desert steppe plant to grazing intensity.
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Data availability
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Inner Mongolia Nature Foundation, China (No. 2020ZD03), the Special Funds for the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements of Inner Mongolia, China (No. 2020CG0055), the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Science and Technology Major Project (No. 2021ZD0044-4), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.32192463, No. 31660108), and the China Scholarship Council (CSC) for supporting this research. We would like to thank Dr. Daniel Petticord at the University of Cornell for his assistance with the English language and grammatical editing of the manuscript.
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Jirong Qiao and Mengli Zhao were responsible for the conception and design of the project. Jirong Qiao performed the experiments with the assistance of Jiahua Zheng, Shaoyu Li, Tianqi Zhao, and Jiangfeng He. Jirong Qiao analyzed the data and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Xinli Chen, Scott X. Chang, Bin Zhang, Jiahua Zheng, Shaoyu Li, and Feng Zhang contributed to reviewing and editing. All authors read and approved the manuscript.
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Qiao, J., Chen, X., Chang, S.X. et al. Grazing intensity changes root traits and resource utilization strategies of Stipa breviflora in a desert steppe. Plant Soil (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-024-06597-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-024-06597-8