IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v10y2021i10p1049-d650749.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Could Land Abandonment with Human Intervention Benefit Cropland Restoration? From the Perspective of Soil Microbiota

Author

Listed:
  • Guangyu Li

    (Institute of Land and Urban-Rural Development, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou 310058, China)

  • Tingting He

    (School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China)

  • Maoxin Zhang

    (School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China)

  • Cifang Wu

    (School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China)

Abstract

Although agricultural land abandonment (LA) is accompanied by land degradation, it could be considered a kind of self-rehabilitation. Studies have shown that long-term LA has profound ecological and environmental benefits, whereas few studies have compared LA with human intervention (HI), which involves planting and fertilization in agroecosystem restoration. Here, we established four different scenarios based on local livestock husbandry, including LA without HI, LA with slight human intervention (HIS), medium human intervention (HIM), and intensive human intervention (HII). LA experiments were conducted for 3 years and repeatedly sampled three times. The soil bacterial and fungal communities were determined to present the ecological impacts. In this study, LA and HIS could save soil inorganic carbon and total calcium (Ca) contents and benefit soil mycorrhizal fungi and plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria. LA and HIM benefited some microbial communities associated with complicated organic compounds. Human interference methods did not significantly increase soil nutrients after 3 years of farmland abandonment. However, indigenous vegetation increased the risk of plant diseases based on soil microbial communities. Forage grass may control the risk, and HIS was a cost-effective scenario in our study. Moreover, we should maintain a cautious attitude toward HII to prevent excessive intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Guangyu Li & Tingting He & Maoxin Zhang & Cifang Wu, 2021. "Could Land Abandonment with Human Intervention Benefit Cropland Restoration? From the Perspective of Soil Microbiota," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-19, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:10:y:2021:i:10:p:1049-:d:650749
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/10/1049/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/10/1049/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yaoben Lin & Yuanbo Wang & Xingjun Lv & Shuangyan Yue & Hongmei Liu & Guangyu Li & Jinghui Zhao, 2023. "How to Improve the Benefits of Short-Term Fallow on Soil Physicochemical and Microbial Properties: A Case Study from the Yellow River Delta," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-15, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:10:y:2021:i:10:p:1049-:d:650749. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.