Long-term impacts of anthropogenic perturbations on dynamics and speciation of organic carbon in tropical forest and subtropical grassland ecosystems

Anthropogenic perturbations have profoundly modified the Earth's biogeochemical cycles, the most prominent of these changes being manifested by global carbon (C) cycling. We investigated long‐term effects of human‐induced land‐use and land‐cover changes from native tropical forest (Kenya) and subtropical grassland (South Africa) ecosystems to agriculture on the dynamics and structural composition of soil organic C (SOC) using elemental analysis and integrated ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), near‐edge X‐ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) and synchrotron‐based Fourier transform infrared‐attenuated total reflectance (Sr‐FTIR‐ATR) spectroscopy. Anthropogenic interventions led to the depletion of 76%, 86% and 67% of the total SOC; and 77%, 85% and 66% of the N concentrations from the surface soils of Nandi, Kakamega and the South African sites, respectively, over a period of up to 100 years. Significant proportions of the total SOC (46–73%) and N (37–73%) losses occurred during the first 4 years of conversion indicating that these forest‐ and grassland‐derived soils contain large amounts of labile soil organic matter (SOM), potentially vulnerable to degradation upon human‐induced land‐use and land‐cover changes. Anthropogenic perturbations altered not only the C sink capacity of these soils, but also the functional group composition and dynamics of SOC with time, rendering structural composition of the resultant organic matter in the agricultural soils to be considerably different from the SOM under natural forest and grassland ecosystems. These molecular level compositional changes were manifested: (i) by the continued degradation of O‐alkyl and acetal‐C structures found in carbohydrate and holocellulose biomolecules, some labile aliphatic‐C functionalities, (ii) by side‐chain oxidation of phenylpropane units of lignin and (iii) by the continued aromatization and aliphatization of the humic fractions possibly through selective accumulation of recalcitrant H and C substituted aryl‐C and aliphatic‐C components such as (poly)‐methylene units, respectively. These changes appeared as early as the fourth year after transition, and their intensity increased with duration of cultivation until a new quasi‐equilibrium of SOC was approached at about 20 years after conversion. However, subtle but persistent changes in molecular structures of the resultant SOM continued long after (up to 100 years) a steady state for SOC was approached. These molecular level changes in the inherent structural composition of SOC may exert considerable influence on biogeochemical cycling of C and bioavailability of essential nutrients present in association with SOM, and may significantly affect the sustainability of agriculture as well as potentials of the soils to sequester C in these tropical and subtropical highland agroecosystems.     

The future of South East Asian rainforests in a changing landscape and climate

With a focus on the Danum Valley area of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, this special issue has as its theme the future of tropical rainforests in a changing landscape and climate. The global environmental context to the issue is briefly given before the contents and rationale of the issue are summarized. Most of the papers are based on research carried out as part of the Royal Society South East Asia Rainforest Research Programme. The issue is divided into five sections: (i) the historical land-use and land management context; (ii) implications of land-use change for atmospheric chemistry and climate change; (iii) impacts of logging, forest fragmentation (particularly within an oil palm plantation landscape) and forest restoration on ecosystems and their functioning; (iv) the response and resilience of rainforest systems to climatic and land-use change; and (v) the scientific messages and policy implications arising from the research findings presented in the issue.     

Tropical Biodiversity in Human-Modified Landscapes: What is our Trump Card?

Many conservationists are now convinced that the expansion of the world system of protected areas combined with appropriate levels of biodiversity persistence within human-modified landscapes would drastically mitigate the announced impoverishment of tropical biotas. In this context, an inherent/intrinsic biodiversity ability to persist and recover within human-modified landscapes has emerged as a ‘trump card’ in the conservation battle, renewing our hope in a more sustainable development of the tropical region. However, this optimistic perspective on the conservation value of human-modified landscapes sounds, a priori, a little unrealistic in face of the current knowledge on the nature of human environments and the spectrum of native species that is likely to persist there. Rather than relying on illusory levels of biodiversity resilience and consequent flexible land-use regulations, our real trump card reposes on a radical and ambitious shift from freely exploited landscapes to strictly managed ones, despite the misleading noise produced by those voices advocating for immediate and almost unlimited access to natural resources. Otherwise, we are condemning future human populations to live in biologically impoverished and fragile environments with limited opportunities for life support.     

基于辅助环境变量的土壤有机碳空间插值——以黄土丘陵区小流域为例

利用普通克里格法(OK)、反距离加权法(IDW)、径向基函数法(RBF)、基于土地利用类型修正的普通克里格法(OK_LU)4种插值方法,对黄土丘陵羊圈沟小流域的土壤有机碳含量进行空间插值。预测结果的准确性通过Pearson相关系数(R),平均绝对误差(MAE),均方根误差(RMSE),准确度(AC)来评价。研究结果表明:(1)在前3种常规空间插值方法中,OK对刻画区域土壤有机碳的空间分布趋势效果最佳,其预测MAE值和RMSE值均为最小,Pearson相关系数(R)和准确度(AC)最大,说明其预测结果的准确性最好、预测的极端误差也最小;其次为RBF;IDW预测的效果最差。(2)OK_LU在空间特征表达方面能够更好地反映复杂地形区的局部变异,其插值结果的精度相比OK有一定程度的提高,其平均绝对误差(MAE)从0.900%降到了0.567%,均方根误差(RMSE)从1.101%降到了0.777%,Pearson相关系数(R)从0.4026提高到0.5589,准确度(AC)从0.9081提高到0.9505。综合比较,在黄土丘陵地区,OK_LU能使插值结果的精度有较大提高,是土壤有机碳空间制图的有效途径。     

Surface sediment diatom assemblages and epilimnetic total phosphorus in large, shallow lakes of the Yangtze floodplain: their relationships and implications for assessing long-term eutrophication

1. The Yangtze floodplain (SE China) is characterized by a number of large shallow lakes, many of which have undergone eutrophication due to the intensification of agriculture and urban growth over recent decades. As monitoring data are limited and in order to determine lake baseline nutrient concentrations, 49 lakes were sampled, covering a total phosphorus (TP) gradient (c. 30–550 μg L⁻¹) to develop a diatom-based inference model. 2. There are three dominant diatom assemblages in these shallow lakes with a marked change in assemblage structure near the boundary between eutrophic and hypereutrophic nutrient levels (as indicated by their TP value). Canonical correspondence analysis indicated that TP was the most important and significant variable in explaining the diatom distributions, independently accounting for 9.5% variance of diatoms. 3. Forty-three lakes were used to generate a transfer function using weighted averaging (WA) with inverse deshrinking. This model had low predictive error (root mean squared error of prediction; RMSEP_jack = 0.12) and a high coefficient of prediction (R²_jack = 0.82), comparable with regional TP models elsewhere. The good performance of this TP model may reflect the low abundance of benthic diatom species which are commonly regarded as the main error source in European shallow lake WA models. 4. The WA model was used to reconstruct the past-TP concentrations for Taibai Lake, a shallow hypereutrophic lake in Hubei province. The results showed that TP concentration varied slightly (43–62 μg L⁻¹) prior to the 1920s, indicating an eutrophic state since the 1800s. A period of sustained eutrophication occurred after 1950, because of the development of agriculture, reflecting by maximum values of Aulacoseira alpigena and increased abundance of Cyclotella meneghiniana, C. atomus and Cyclostephanos dubius. The steep increase in nutrient concentration after 1970 was related to the overuse of chemical fertilizer and fish farming in the catchment. 5. The shift in fossil diatoms from epiphytic to planktonic forms in the lake sediment core during 1950–70 provides useful information on the transformation from macrophyte-dominated to alga-dominated states. It is plausible that the TP concentration of 80–110 μg L⁻¹ observed in this study is the critical range for switching between the two stable states in the lake. 6. The regional diatom-TP model developed in this study allows, therefore, the possibility of reconstructing historical background nutrient concentrations in lakes. It will provide an indication of the onset and development of eutrophication at any site. This is particularly important for the many lakes in the Yangtze floodplain where information about historical changes in water quality is lacking.     

陇中黄土丘陵区土地利用强度-生态系统服务-人类福祉时空关系研究——以安定区为例

基于土地利用和社会统计数据,构建了"土地利用强度-生态系统服务-人类福祉"多尺度分析框架,从县区和乡镇尺度探讨了定西市安定区1990—2015年土地利用强度-生态系统服务-人类福祉的时空权衡/协同关系。结果表明:1990—2015年安定区土地利用强度-生态系统服务-人类福祉关系变化存在区域整体相似性和乡镇局部差异性;土地利用强度的增加,提高了供给服务和生产资料供给福祉,但弱化了调节和支持服务;供给与支持服务权衡主要集中于安定区北部和西南部。该区生态系统服务间的权衡程度较高,不利于生态系统服务保育和居民福祉的持续提升。区域的脱贫致富因立足于提高居民福祉,退耕还林还草、发展特色高效产业、劳务输出等是实现该区社会生态系统的经济收益与生态效益共赢的有效途径。     

Changes in soil carbon inventories following cultivation of previously untilled soils

Cultivation of previously untilled soils usually results in release of carbon from the soil to the atmosphere, which can affect both soil fertility locally and the atmospheric burden of CO₂ globally. Generalizations about the magnitude of this flux have been hampered by a lack of good quality comparative data on soil carbon stocks of cultivated and uncultivated soils. Using data from several recent studies, we have reexamined the conclusions of previous reviews of this subject. The data were divided into subsets according to whether the soils were sampled by genetic horizon or by fixed depths. Sampling by fixed depths appears to underestimate soil C losses, but both subsets of data support earlier conclusions that between 20% and 40% of the soil C is lost following cultivation. Our best estimate is a loss of about 30% from the entire soil solum. Our analysis also supports the conclusion that most of the loss of soil C occurs within the first few Years (even within two Years in some cases) following initial cultivation. Our analysis does not support an earlier conclusion that the fractional loss of soil carbon is positively correlated to the amount of carbon initially present in the uncultivated soil. We found no relation between carbon content of uncultivated soil and the percentage lost following cultivation.     

Soil Charcoal in Old-Growth Rain Forests from Sea Level to the Continental Divide

Soil charcoal is an indicator of Holocene fires as well as a palaeoecological signature of pre-Colombian land use in Neotropical rain forests. To document rain forest fire history, we examined soil charcoal patterns in continuous old-growth forests along an elevational transect from sea level to the continental divide on the Atlantic slope of Costa Rica. At 10 elevations we sampled 1-ha plots, using 16 cores/ha to collect 1.5-m deep soil samples. We found charcoal in soils at every elevation, with total dry mass ranging from 3.18 g/m² at 2000-m elevation to as much as 102.7 g/m² at 300 m. Soil charcoal is most abundant at the wettest lowland sites (60–500 m) and less at montane elevations (> 1000 m) where there is less rainfall. Between 30- and 90-cm soil depth, soil charcoal is present consistently and every 1-ha plot has charcoal evidence for multiple fire events. Radiocarbon dates range from 23,240 YBP at 1750-m elevation to 140 YBP at 2600 m. Interestingly, none of the charcoal samples from 2600 m are older than 170 yr, which suggests that forests near the continental divide are relatively young replacement stands that have re-established since the most recent localized volcanic eruption on Volcán Barva. We propose that these old-growth forests have been disturbed infrequently but multiple times as a consequence of anthropogenic and natural fires.