Effects of land use and cover change on soil organic carbon and total
nitrogen in southwest China Karst region: A Meta-analysis
Abstract
The vast Karst area in southwestern China is ecologically fragile
region, where both soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) are
evidently sensitive to LUCC. However, there has not been any
comprehensive study to analyze the effects of LUCC on SOC/TN in this
region based on large data ensembles. In this paper, the response of SOC
and TN storage to LUCC (i.e., deforestation and land restoration) in the
Karst region of southwestern China was investigated by meta-analysis,
which was found to be controlled by a series of impact factors, such as
the type of LUCC, sampling depth, calculation methods and environmental
factors. Based on 471 sets of SOC data and 468 sets of TN data, Firstly,
we evaluated the calculation methods (i.e., fixed-depth method, the main
deviation from the two methods was that the FD procedure neglected the
heterogeneity of soil bulk density, which may underestimate the loss of
SOC and TN after deforestation but overestimate the benefits of land
restoration to SOC and TN. Secondly, we found that when woodland and
grassland were converted to cultivated land or other land types, SOC and
TN losses were greater; while other LUCCs had less impact. Similarly,
land restoration increased the SOC and TN, especially the restoration
from farmland to forests. Also, we demonstrated that increasing the soil
sampling depth could significantly alter the response of SOC and TN to
LUCC. Finally, the environmental factors affecting SOC storage (such as
soil properties, geographic and climatic factors and duration) were
discussed.