Long-term grazing reduces soil fungal network complexity but enhances plant-soil microbe network connectivity in a semi-arid grassland.

Grazing plays a significant role in shaping both aboveground vegetation and belowground microbial communities in arid and semi-arid grasslands, which in turn affects ecosystem functions and sustainability. Therefore, it was essential to implement effective grazing management practices to preserve ecological balance and support sustainable development in these delicate environments. To optimize the traditional continuous grazing policy, we conducted a 10-year seasonal grazing experiment with five treatments in a typical grassland in northern China: no grazing (NG), continuous summer grazing (CG), and three seasonal grazing treatments (G57 in May and July, G68 in June and August, and G79 in July and September).

Short term grazing increased growing-season NO production and decreased its reduction potential by reducing the abundance and expression of nosZ clade II gene in a semi-arid steppe.

Understanding nitrous oxide (NO) production as well as reduction in response to grazing and mowing is essential for designing better management strategies to improve sustainability of grassland ecosystems. We evaluated how four years of grazing or mowing altered NO production and reduction potential, gene abundance, and expression of microbial functional groups pertinent to NO production in situ on a typical grassland in Inner Mongolia. In our study, we found that grazing dramatically raised soil ammonium (NH-N) and nitrate (NO-N) concentrations, AOB gene abundance and potential of NO production through nitrification (N) and denitrification (D) in summer, but lessened the expression of nosZ clade II gene in all seasons.

Warming in combination with increased precipitation mediate the sexual and clonal reproduction in the desert steppe dominant species Stipa breviflora.

Background: Clonal plants can successfully adapt to various ecosystems. A trade-off between sexual and clonal reproduction is generally assumed in clonal plants, which may be influenced both by the characteristics of the plant itself and environmental conditions. Currently, it is unclear how climate change, and specifically warming and increased precipitation, might affect sexual and clonal reproduction in clonal plants.

Changes in soil organic carbon and nitrogen stocks following revegetation in a semi-arid grassland of North China.

Long-term restoration practices have been often reported to enhance soil organic carbon (SOC) and nitrogen (N) stocks in grassland ecosystems. However, there is a limited understanding of how vegetation restoration affects SOC and N stocks at different soil depths over short timescales in semi-arid grassland of North China. To address this problem, we conducted a field study to investigate the effects of plant properties on the SOC and N stock changes during a nine-year period of grassland restoration practices (natural recovery; shallow ploughing; harrowing) in a semi-arid grassland of North China.

Effects of seasonal grazing on plant and soil microbial diversity of typical temperate grassland.

Biodiversity is the decisive factor of grassland ecological function and process. As the most important human use of grassland, grazing inevitably affects the grassland biodiversity. However, comprehensive studies of seasonal grazing on plant and soil bacterial, archaeal and fungal diversity of typical temperate grassland are still lacking.

Plant and soil properties mediate the response of soil microbial communities to moderate grazing in a semiarid grassland of northern China.

Even though a growing amount of information about the effects of livestock grazing on soil microbial communities have accumulated in literature, less is known about the combined response of plants, soil properties, and their interactions with soil microbes. In this study, we used a seven-year controlled grazing experiment to quantify the response of plant and soil properties and their interactions with soil microbial communities to moderate grazing in a semiarid grassland of Northern China. Our results showed that moderate grazing reduced the richness and diversity of soil microbial communities, as well as weakened community interactions.

Characterization of soil microbes associated with a grazing-tolerant grass species, , in the Inner Mongolian desert steppe.

Although soil microbial communities are central in ecosystem functioning, we know little of their characterization for those associated with grazing-tolerant host plant species in grassland ecosystems in response to grazing. In this study, we used a high-throughput sequencing approach to characterize soil microbes from the rhizosphere and bulk soil of grazing-tolerant grass species, , in the Inner Mongolian desert steppe. We found that response mechanisms of soil bacteria distinct from fungal communities, and variance also occur between the rhizosphere and bulk soil communities under long-term grazing.

Effects of mowing regimes on above- and belowground biota in semi-arid grassland of northern China.

Mowing is a widely used practice for haymaking in the semi-arid grassland of northern China. Yet, how it impacts above- and belowground biota and ultimately affects the grassland ecosystem is unclear. Here we address this question by investigating the effects of three mowing regimes (no mowing, mowing once per year, mowing twice every three years) on vegetation characteristics, soil properties, and microbial communities in semi-arid grassland of Inner Mongolia.

Soil fungal networks are more sensitive to grazing exclusion than bacterial networks.

Soil microbial communities play a crucial role in ecological restoration, but it is unknown how co-occurrence networks within these communities respond to grazing exclusion. This lack of information was addressed by investigating the effects of eight years of grazing exclusion on microbial networks in an area of P. Smirn desert steppe in northern China.

Physiology of Leymus chinensis under seasonal grazing: Implications for the development of sustainable grazing in a temperate grassland of Inner Mongolia.

Plants have different physiological characteristics as the season changes, grazing management in compliance with plant growth and development characteristics may provide new ideas for sustainable livestock development. However, there has been little research on seasonal grazing and plants physiological responses under it. Here, we studied a typical steppe ecosystem of Inner Mongolia, with Leymus chinensis as the dominant species, in five grazing treatments: continuous grazing, seasonal grazing (which started in spring or in early and late summer), and no grazing (the control).

Land use alters relationships of grassland productivity with plant and arthropod diversity in Inner Mongolian grassland.

The threats of land-use intensification to biodiversity have motivated considerable research directed toward understanding the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF). Functional diversity is deemed a better indicator than species diversity to clarify the BEF relationships. However, most tests of the BEF relationship have been conducted in highly controlled plant communities, with terrestrial animal communities largely unexplored.

Plant production decreases whereas nutrients concentration increases in response to the decrease of mowing stubble height.

Mowing is a common practice in grassland management. It removes the majority of current year's aboveground plant biomass and thus substantial amounts of nutrients residing in plant tissues. The responses of plant aboveground biomass and nutrients to mowing stubble height is of great importance for developing sustainable mowing regimes, however, they are not well understood.

[Moderate grazing increases the abundance of soil methane-oxidizing bacteria and CH uptake rate in a typical steppe of Inner Mongolia, China].

Microbial oxidation is the only biological sink of atmospheric methane (CH). It is essential to understand the variation of CH fluxes among different grassland use types for developing low-emission management system. Here, we measured the CH flux and the soil methane-oxidizing bacteria abundance in a typical steppe under grazing, mowing and fencing management in central Inner Mongolia, with the aims to determine the effects of these grassland use types on CH flux, and to test the hypothesis that pmoA functional gene abundance regulates CH fluxes.

How fall dormancy benefits alfalfa winter-survival? Physiologic and transcriptomic analyses of dormancy process.

Background: Fall dormancy and freezing tolerance characterized as two important phenotypic traits, have great effects on productivity and persistence of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.). Despite the fact that one of the most limiting traits for alfalfa freezing tolerance in winter is fall dormancy, the interplay between fall dormancy and cold acclimation processes of alfalfa remains largely unknown.

[Effects of grazing and mowing on macrofauna communities in a typical steppe of Inner Mongolia, China].

The dynamic features of the ecosystem components under different human activities are fundamental for understanding the ecosystem change mechanisms and developing sustainable mana-gement system. For the vast temperate steppe ecosystems in northern China, there existed many studies on the effects of animal grazing and mowing on plant and soil microbial communities, but not the soil fauna communities. We investigated the soil macrofauna communities of a typical Inner Mongolia steppe grassland under 6 utilization treatments (1 full season grazing, 3 different seasonal grazing, 1 autumn mowing and 1 control of no grazing or mowing).

Plant sizes mediate mowing-induced changes in nutrient stoichiometry and allocation of a perennial grass in semi-arid grassland.

While mowing-induced changes in plant traits and their effects on ecosystem functioning in semi-arid grassland are well studied, the relations between plant size and nutrient strategies are largely unknown. Mowing may drive the shifts of plant nutrient limitation and allocation. Here, we evaluated the changes in nutrient stoichiometry and allocation with variations in sizes of , the dominant plant species in Inner Mongolia grassland, to various mowing frequencies in a 17-yr controlled experiment.

Nutrient Characteristics in Relation to Plant Size of a Perennial Grass Under Grazing Exclusion in Degraded Grassland.

Identifying the linkages between nutrient properties and plant size is important for reducing uncertainty in understanding the mechanisms of plant phenotypic plasticity. Although the positive effects of grazing exclusion on plant morphological plasticity has been well documented, surprisingly little is known about the relationship of nutrient strategies with plant shoot size after long-term grazing exclusion. We experimentally investigated the impacts of grazing exclusion over time (0, 9, 15, and 35 years) on the relationships of nutrient traits (nutrient concentration, allocation, and stoichiometry) of with morphological plasticity in , which is a dominant species in grasslands of Inner Mongolia, China.

Phytolith-occluded organic carbon as a mechanism for long-term carbon sequestration in a typical steppe: The predominant role of belowground productivity.

Phytolith-occluded organic carbon (phytOC) has recently been demonstrated to be an important terrestrial carbon (C) fraction resistant to decomposition and thus has potential for long-term C sequestration. Existing studies show that plant leaves and sheath normally have high phytOC concentration, thus most of phytOC studies are limited to the aboveground plant parts. Grassland communities comprise herbaceous species, especially grasses and sedges which have relatively high concentrations of phytoliths, but the phytOC production from grassland, especially from its belowground part, is unknown.

The responses of soil respiration to nitrogen addition in a temperate grassland in northern China.

Anthropogenic activities have increased nitrogen (N) inputs to grassland ecosystems. Knowledge of the impact of soil N availability on soil respiration (RS) is critical to understand soil carbon balances and their responses to global climate change. A 2-year field experiment was conducted to evaluate the response of RS to soil mineral N in a temperate grassland in northern China.

[Ecosystem carbon exchange in Artemisia ordosica shrubland of Ordos Plateau in two different precipitation years].

Characteristics of ecosystem carbon exchange and its impact factors in Artemisia ordosica shrubland in 2011 (low precipitation) and 2012 (high precipitation), Ordos Plateau, were studied using eddy covariance methods. The results showed that the diurnal dynamics of ecosystem carbon exchange could be expressed as single-peak and double-peak curves in the two different precipitation years. In 2011, three carbon absorption peaks and three carbon release peaks of ecosystem carbon exchange presented in the growing season.

[Problems in development of agriculture-animal husbandry ecotone and its countermeasures].

Problems in development of Duolun, a typical agriculture-animal husbandry ecotone, and its countermeasures were discussed in this paper. Economic structure was not rational in Duolun, and it should develop industry and commerce, limit the scope of agriculture and animal husbandry, and actively increase efficiency of agriculture and animal husbandry. The structure of land use was not rational, and the main countermeasures were to increase area of forestland and grassland, and decrease cultivated area.