scholarly journals Soil microbiological properties and enzymatic activities of long-term post-fire recovery in dry and semiarid Aleppo pine (<i>Pinus halepensis</i> M.) forest stands

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 3025-3050 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Hedo ◽  
M. E. Lucas-Borja ◽  
C. Wic ◽  
M. Andrés Abellán ◽  
J. de Las Heras

Abstract. Wildfires affecting forest ecosystems and post-fire silvicultural treatments may cause considerable changes in soil properties. The capacity of different microbial groups to recolonize soil after disturbances is crucial for proper soil functioning. The aim of this work was to investigate some microbial soil properties and enzyme activities in semiarid and dry Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis M.) forest stands. Different plots affected by a wildfire event 17 years ago without or with post-fire silvicultural treatments five years after the fire event were selected. A mature Aleppo pine stand unaffected by wildfire and not thinned was used as a control. Physicochemical soil properties (soil texture, pH, carbonates, organic matter, electrical conductivity, total N and P), soil enzymes (urease, phosphatase, β-glucosidase and dehydrogenase activities), soil respiration and soil microbial biomass carbon were analysed in the selected forests areas and plots. The main finding was that long time after this fire event produces no differences in the microbiological soil properties and enzyme activities of soil after comparing burned and thinned, burned and not thinned, and mature plots. Thus, the long-term consequences and post-fire silvicultural management in the form of thinning have a significant effect on the site recovery after fire. Moreover, significant site variation was generally seen in soil enzyme activities and microbiological parameters. We conclude that total vegetation restoration normalises microbial parameters, and that wildfire and post-fire silvicultural treatments are not significant factors of soil properties after 17 years.

Solid Earth ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Hedo ◽  
M. E. Lucas-Borja ◽  
C. Wic ◽  
M. Andrés-Abellán ◽  
J. de Las Heras

Abstract. Wildfires affecting forest ecosystems and post-fire silvicultural treatments may cause considerable changes in soil properties. The capacity of different microbial groups to recolonise soil after disturbances is crucial for proper soil functioning. The aim of this work was to investigate some microbial soil properties and enzyme activities in semiarid and dry Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis M.) forest stands. Different plots affected by a wildfire event 17 years ago without or with post-fire silvicultural treatments 5 years after the fire event were selected. A mature Aleppo pine stand, unaffected by wildfire and not thinned was used as a control. Physicochemical soil properties (soil texture, pH, carbonates, organic matter, electrical conductivity, total N and P), soil enzymes (urease, phosphatase, β-glucosidase and dehydrogenase activities), soil respiration and soil microbial biomass carbon were analysed in the selected forests areas and plots. The main finding was that long time after this fire event produces no differences in the microbiological soil properties and enzyme activities of soil after comparing burned and thinned, burned and not thinned, and mature plots. Moreover, significant site variation was generally seen in soil enzyme activities and microbiological parameters. We conclude that total vegetation recovery normalises post-fire soil microbial parameters, and that wildfire and post-fire silvicultural treatments are not significant factors affecting soil properties after 17 years.


2012 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
X. H. Li ◽  
X. Z. Han ◽  
H. B. Li ◽  
C. Song ◽  
J. Yan ◽  
...  

Li, X. H., Han, X. Z., Li, H. B., Song, C., Yan, J. and Liang, Y. 2012. Soil chemical and biological properties affected by 21-year application of composted manure with chemical fertilizers in a Chinese Mollisol. Can. J. Soil Sci. 92: 419–428. The effects of 21-yr of application of chemical fertilizers, composted pig manure (CPM) alone, and chemical fertilizers combined with compost on soil chemical and biological properties were investigated. Soil samples (0–20cm) were collected from a long-term fertilization experiment under corn (Zea mays L.) production in 2006, prior to seeding, at the corn tasseling stage and following harvest. Fertilizer treatments were: no fertilizer (CK), nitrogen fertilizer alone (N), N + phosphorus (NP), N + P + potassium (NPK), CPM, N + CPM, N + P + CPM (NP + CPM), and N + P + K + CPM (NPK + CPM). Long-term application of N alone resulted in a reduction of soil pH by 0.38 units and reduced the available P concentration compared with CK. An increase in soil pH was seen with CPM alone and NPK + CPM. Both fertilizers sources, singly and combined, increased the total N and available N concentrations. Total P and total K concentrations were greatest with the NPK + CPM treatment. All fertilizer treatments increased the soil organic carbon (SOC), light fraction organic carbon (LFOC) and microbial biomass carbon (MBC) concentrations significantly (P < 0.05) at the tasseling stage. The NPK + CPM treatment showed the greatest increase in SOC (12%), LFOC (78%) and MBC (44%) concentrations, compared with CK. Soil enzyme activities (invertase, urease, acid and alkaline phosphatases) tended to be greater at tasseling than other sampling dates, with highest enzyme activities in the NPK + CPM treatments. These findings suggest that a long-term application of CPM combined with NPK is an efficient strategy to maintain or increase soil quality in Mollisols for sustainable agriculture.


Soil Research ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joginder Kaur ◽  
O. P. Choudhary ◽  
Bijay-Singh

Long-term sodic-water irrigation may adversely affect the quality of soil organic carbon along with some soil properties. The extent to which the adverse effects can be ameliorated through the use of gypsum and amendments needs to be known. Soil properties and microbial biomass carbon (MBC) were studied after 14 years of sodic water (SW) irrigation and application of different levels of gypsum, farmyard manure (FYM), green manure (GM), and wheat straw (WS) to a sandy loam soil. Irrigation with SW increased pH, electrical conductivity, sodium adsorption ratio, exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP), and bulk density, and decreased final infiltration rate of soil. Application of gypsum and organic amendments reversed these trends. Decrease in MBC due to SW irrigation was from 132.5 to 44.6 mg/kg soil in the 0–75 mm soil layer and from 49.0 to 17.3 mg/kg soil in the 75–150 mm soil layer. Application of gypsum and organic amendments significantly increased MBC; GM and FYM were more effective than WS. Changes in soil ESP explained 85 and 75% variation in MBC in the unamended and organically amended SW treatments, respectively. Soil pH as additional variable improved the predictability of MBC to 96% and 77%. Irrigation with SW reduced yield of rice plus wheat by 5 t/ha. Application of gypsum and organic amendments significantly increased the rice and wheat yield; it was significantly correlated with MBC (r = 0.56**, n = 60). It confirms that MBC rather than organic C is a more sensitive indicator of environmental stresses in soils caused by long-term sodic water irrigation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. Miller ◽  
B. W. Beasley ◽  
C. F. Drury ◽  
X. Hao ◽  
F. J. Larney

Miller, J. J., Beasley, B. W., Drury, C. F., Hao, X. and Larney, F. J. 2014. Soil properties following long-term application of stockpiled feedlot manure containing straw or wood-chip bedding under barley silage production. Can. J. Soil Sci. 94: 389–402. The influence of long-term land application of stockpiled feedlot manure (SM) containing either wood-chip (SM-WD) or straw (SM-ST) bedding on soil properties during the barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) silage growing season is unknown. The main objective of our study was determine the effect of bedding material in stockpiled manure (i.e., SM-WD vs. SM-ST) on certain soil properties. A secondary objective was to determine if organic amendments affected certain soil properties compared with unamended soil. Stockpiled feedlot manure with SM-WD or SM-ST bedding at 77 Mg (dry wt) ha−1 yr−1 was annually applied for 13 to 14 yr to a clay loam soil in a replicated field experiment in southern Alberta. There was also an unamended control. Soil properties were measured every 2 wk during the 2011 and 2012 growing season. Properties included water-filled pore space (WFPS), total organic C and total N, NH4-N and NO3-N, water-soluble non-purgeable organic C (NPOC), water-soluble total N (WSTN), denitrification (acetylene inhibition method), and CO2 flux. The most consistent and significant (P≤0.05) bedding effects on soil properties in both years occurred for total organic C, C:N ratio, and WSTN. Total organic C and C:N ratio were generally greater for SM-WD than SM-ST, and the reverse trend occurred for WSTN. Bedding effects on other soil properties (WFPS, NH4-N, NO3-N, NPOC) occurred in 2012, but not in 2011. Total N, daily denitrification, and daily CO2 flux were generally unaffected by bedding material. Mean daily denitrification fluxes ranged from 0.9 to 1078 g N2O-N ha−1 d−1 for SM-ST, 0.8 to 326 g N2O-N ha−1 d−1 for SM-WD, and 0.6 to 250 g N2O-N ha−1 d−1 for the CON. Mean daily CO2 fluxes ranged from 5.3 to 43.4 kg CO2-C ha−1 d−1 for SM-WD, 5.5 to 26.0 kg CO2-C ha−1 d−1 for SM-ST, and from 0.5 to 6.8 kg CO2-C ha−1 d−1 for the CON. The findings from our study suggest that bedding material in feedlot manure may be a possible method to manage certain soil properties.


2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 856 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Couto-Vázquez ◽  
S. García-Marco ◽  
S. J. González-Prieto

The effects of fire and firefighting chemicals on soil properties and the soil–plant system were evaluated 5 years after treatment application. Unburnt soils were compared with burnt soils treated with water alone (BS) or with foaming agent (BS+Fo), Firesorb polymer (BS+Fi), or ammonium polyphosphate (BS+Ap). Soils (0–2 cm depth) and foliar material (Ulex micranthus, Pterospartum tridentatum, Erica umbellata and Pinus pinaster) were analysed for total C, total N, δ15N, nutrients (soil-available; plant total), pH and inorganic-N (soils) and vegetation cover and height. No long-term effects of firefighting chemicals on soil properties were found except for pH (BS+Fo > BS+Ap), inorganic-N and P (BS+Ap > other treatments). BS+Ap plants usually showed higher values of δ15N, N, P and Na, but less K. Soil coverage by Pterospartum and Ulex was higher in BS+Ap than in other treatments, whereas the opposite was observed for Erica; shrubs were always taller in BS+Ap. After 3 years of growth, the size of pine seedlings followed the order BS+Ap > unburnt soil > other treatments. Foliar N and P, scrub regeneration and growth of pines showed the long-term fertilising effect of ammonium polyphosphate, although the second highest pine mortality was found in the BS+Ap treatment. The foaming agent did not affect vegetation cover, and Firesorb had no noticeable effect on shrubs but the highest pine mortality.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Baumann ◽  
Anatol Helfenstein ◽  
Andreas Gubler ◽  
Armin Keller ◽  
Reto Giulio Meuli ◽  
...  

Abstract. Information on soils' composition and physical, chemical and biological properties is paramount to elucidate agroecosystem functioning in space and over time. For this purposes we developed a national Swiss soil spectral library (SSL; n = 4374) in the mid-infrared (mid-IR), calibrating 17 properties from legacy measurements on soils from the Swiss biodiversity monitoring program (n = 3778; 1094 sites) and the Swiss long-term monitoring network (n = 596; 71 sites). General models were trained with the interpretable rule-based learner CUBIST, testing combinations of {5, 10, 20, 50, 100} committees of rules and {2, 5, 7, 9} neighbors to localize predictions with repeated by location grouped ten-fold cross-validation. To evaluate the information in spectra to facilitate long-term soil monitoring at a plot-level, we conducted 71 model transfers for the NABO sites to induce locally relevant information from the SSL, using the data-driven sample selection method rs-local. Eleven soil properties were estimated with discrimination capacity suitable for screening (R2 > 0.6), out of which total carbon (C), organic C (OC), total N, organic matter content, pH, and clay showed accuracy eligible for accurate diagnostics (R2 > 0.8). Cubist and the spectra estimated total C accurately with RMSE = 0.84 % while the measured range was 0.1–⁠58.3 %, and OC with RMSE = 1.20 % (measured range 0.0–⁠27.3 %). Compared to general estimates of properties from Cubist, local modeling on average reduced the root mean square error of total C per site fourfold. We found that the selected SSL subsets were highly dissimilar in terms of both their spectral input space and the measured values. This suggests that data-driven selection with RS-LOCAL leverages chemical diversity in composition rather than similarity. Our results suggest that mid-IR soil estimates were sufficiently accurate to support many soil applications that require a large volume of input data, such as precision agriculture, soil C accounting and monitoring, and digital soil mapping. This SSL can be updated continuously, for example with samples from deeper profiles and organic soils, so that the measurement of key soil properties becomes even more accurate and efficient in the near future.


Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2057
Author(s):  
Sehrish Ali ◽  
Kailou Liu ◽  
Waqas Ahmed ◽  
Huang Jing ◽  
Muhammad Qaswar ◽  
...  

A long-term experiment (38 years) was conducted to elucidate the effects of long-term N addition on the net N mineralization in both paddy and upland soils, based on their initial soil N status, with and in connection with soil microbial biomass and N cycling extracellular enzyme activities. Two treatments without N addition CK (No fertilizer) and K (inorganic potassium fertilizer) and two treatments with N addition N (inorganic nitrogen fertilizer) and NK (inorganic nitrogen and potassium fertilizer) were placed in incubation for 90 days. Results showed that the total N and soil organic carbon (SOC) contents were higher in the treatments with N application compared to the treatments without N in both paddy and upland soils. The SOC content of paddy soil was increased relative to upland soil by 56.2%, 45.7%, 61.1% and 62.2% without N (CK, K) and with N (N and NK) treatments, respectively. Site-wise, total N concentration in paddy soil was higher by 0.06, 0.10, 0.57 and 0.60 times under the CK, K, N and NK treatments, respectively, compared with upland soil. In paddy soil, soil microbial biomass nitrogen (SMBN) was higher by 39.6%, 2.77%, 29.5% and 31.4%, and microbial biomass carbon (SMBC) was higher by 11.8%, 11.9%, 10.1% and 12.3%, respectively, in CK, K, N and NK treatment, compared with upland soil. Overall, compared to upland soil, the activities of leucine-aminopeptidase (LAP) were increased by 31%, 18%, 20% and 11%, and those of N-acetyl-b-D-glucosaminidase (NAG) were increased by 70%, 21%, 13% and 18% by CK, K, N and NK treatments, respectively, in paddy soil. A significantly linear increase was found in the NO3−-N and NH4+-N concentrations during the 90 days of the incubation period in both soils. NK treatment showed the highest N mineralization potential (No) along with mineralization rate constant, k (NMR) at the end of the incubation. SMBC, SMBN, enzyme activities, NO3−-N and NH4+-N concentrations and the No showed a highly significant (p ≤ 0.05) positive correlation. We concluded that long-term N addition accelerated the net mineralization by increasing soil microbial activities under both soils.


2014 ◽  
Vol 143 ◽  
pp. 155-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael López ◽  
Pilar Burgos ◽  
José M. Hermoso ◽  
José I. Hormaza ◽  
J. Jorge González-Fernández

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josep Maria Espelta ◽  
Iraima Verkaik ◽  
Màrcia Eugenio ◽  
Francisco Lloret

Increasing fire recurrence is a major problem threatening Mediterranean-type ecosystems. Moreover, this pattern is predicted to increase owing to global change. Although a reduction in the density and growth of post-fire regeneration is usually observed in recurrently burnt areas, the potential effects on reproductive ability have seldom been explored. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether structural changes induced by fire recurrence may constrain reproduction ability of Pinus halepensis forests. We conducted the current study in Catalonia (NE Spain) in 12 study sites, consisting of two adjacent areas differing in the number of fire events suffered throughout the last 16 years (one v. two fires). Twice-burnt areas showed a lower density of pines, lower pine height and a lower reproductive ability, namely (i) a 3-year delay in the onset of pine reproduction; (ii) a reduction of 52% in the number of reproductive pines; and (iii) a 36% lower mean cone crop per tree. The lower mean cone production per tree coupled with a lower density resulted in an ~80% lower canopy seed bank in twice-burnt areas. These results suggest that the occurrence of a third fire event in twice-burnt areas would severely constrain natural regeneration.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
Nabin Rawal ◽  
Devraj Chalise ◽  
Janmejai Tripathi ◽  
Dinesh Khadka ◽  
Khim Thapa

A long-term soil fertility experiment under rice-rice-wheat system was performed to evaluate the long term effects of inorganic fertilizer and manure applications on soil properties and grain yield of wheat. The experiment began since 1978 was laid out in randomized complete block design with 9 treatments replicated 3 times. From 1990 onwards, periodic modifications have been made in all the treatments splitting the plots in two equal halves of 4 x 3 m2 leaving one half as original. In the original treatments, recent data revealed that the use of Farm Yard Manure (FYM) @10 t ha-1 gave significantly (P≤0.05) higher yield of 2.3 t ha-1 in wheat, whereas control plot gave the lowest grain yield of 277 kg ha-1. Similarly, in the modified treatments, the use of FYM @10 t ha-1 along with inorganic Nitrogen (N) and Potassium oxide (K2O) @ 50 kg ha-1 produced significantly (P≤0.05) the highest yield of 2.4 t/ha in wheat. The control plot with an indigenous nutrient supply only produced wheat yield of 277 kg ha-1 after 35th year completion of rice-rice-wheat system. A sharp decline in wheat yields was noted in minus N, phosphorus (P), Potassium (K) treatments during recent years. Yields were consistently higher in the N:P2O5:K2O and FYM treatments than in treatments, where one or more nutrients were lacking. The application of P2O5 and K2O caused a partial recovery of yield in P and K deficient plots. There was significant (P≤0.05) effect of use of chemical fertilizers and manure on soil properties. The soil analysis data showed an improvement in soil pH (7.8), soil organic matter (4.1%), total N content (0.16%), available P (503.5 kg P2O5 ha-1) and exchangeable K (137.5 kg K2O ha-1) in FYM applied treatments over all other treatments. The findings showed that the productivity of the wheat can be increased and sustained by improving nutrient through the integrated use of organic and inorganic manures in long term.Journal of Nepal Agricultural Research Council Vol.1 2015 pp.21-28


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document