Methane pulse spray and irrigation promote seed germination and seedling growth of common vetch.

Background: Grazing livestock emits methane through rumen intestinal activity, however, its impact on plant growth in grassland while grazing still has not been explored in detail. Therefore, the study examined the effects of methane pulse spray (MPS), according to grazing intensity, at four grazing intensities (0, 3.6, 5.

Forage taste agents manage plant communities through modifying grazing behavior of yak in alpine meadow.

The use of taste agents to regulate the grazing behavior of livestock is a new attempt in pasture management, but the effects on grassland plant communities are not clear at present. Therefore, the following scientific questions need to be addressed: (1) how do different taste agents affected plant community structure by changing feed intake? (2) What was the mechanism of this effect? We proposed the following hypotheses: (1) Salt and sweetener increased feed intake of livestock and decreased the biomass of plant community, while bitters did the opposite. (2) Taste agents can regulate the relationship between plant species, and different taste agents can enhance or weaken the competitiveness of the different plants.

[Effects of plateau zokor disturbance and restoration years on soil nutrients and microbial functional diversity in alpine meadow].

To explore the dynamic process of restoration succession in degraded alpine meadow that had been disturbed by plateau zokors in the eastern Tibetan Plateau, we examined soil nutrients and microbial functional diversity using conventional laboratory analysis and the Biolog-ECO microplate method. Our study showed that: 1) The zokors disturbance significantly reduced soil organic matter, total nitrogen, available nitrogen and phosphorus contents, but had no significant effects on soil total phosphorus and potassium contents; 2) Soil microbial carbon utilization efficiency, values of Shannon, Pielou and McIntosh indexes increased with alpine meadow restoration years; 3) Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that carbohydrates and amino acids were the main carbon sources for maintaining soil microbial community; 4) Redundancy analysis ( RDA) indicated that soil pH, soil organic matter, total nitrogen, available nitrogen, and total potassium were the main factors influencing the metabolic rate of soil microbial community and microbial functional diversity. In summary, variations in soil microbial functional diversity at different recovery stages reflected the microbial response to aboveground vegetation, soil microbial composition and soil nutrients.