IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v8y2016i6p581-d72394.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Soil Seed Bank and Plant Community Development in Passive Restoration of Degraded Sandy Grasslands

Author

Listed:
  • Renhui Miao

    (International Joint Research Laboratory for Global Change Ecology, College of Life Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China)

  • Yongheng Song

    (International Joint Research Laboratory for Global Change Ecology, College of Life Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China)

  • Zhaolin Sun

    (International Joint Research Laboratory for Global Change Ecology, College of Life Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China)

  • Meixia Guo

    (Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China)

  • Zhenxing Zhou

    (International Joint Research Laboratory for Global Change Ecology, College of Life Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China)

  • Yinzhan Liu

    (International Joint Research Laboratory for Global Change Ecology, College of Life Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China)

Abstract

To evaluate the efficacy of passive restoration on soil seed bank and vegetation recovery, we measured the species composition and density of the soil seed bank, as well as the species composition, density, coverage, and height of the extant vegetation in sites passively restored for 0, 4, 7, and 12 years (S0, S4, S7, and S12) in a degraded grassland in desert land. Compared with S0, three more species in the soil seed bank at depths of 0–30 cm and one more plant species in the community was detected in S12. Seed density within the topsoil (0–5 cm) was five times higher in S12 than that in S0. Plant densities in S7 and S12 were triple and quadruple than that in S0. Plant coverage was increased by 1.5 times (S4), double (S7), and triple (S12) compared with S0. Sørensen’s index of similarity in species composition between the soil seed bank and the plant community were high (0.43–0.63), but it was lower in short-term restoration sites (S4 and S7) than that in no and long-term restoration sites (S0 and S12). The soil seed bank recovered more slowly than the plant community under passive restoration. Passive restoration is a useful method to recover the soil seed bank and vegetation in degraded grasslands.

Suggested Citation

  • Renhui Miao & Yongheng Song & Zhaolin Sun & Meixia Guo & Zhenxing Zhou & Yinzhan Liu, 2016. "Soil Seed Bank and Plant Community Development in Passive Restoration of Degraded Sandy Grasslands," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(6), pages 1-8, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:6:p:581-:d:72394
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/6/581/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/6/581/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Botir Khaitov & Munisa Urmonova & Aziz Karimov & Botirjon Sulaymonov & Kholik Allanov & Inomjon Israilov & Oybek Sottorov, 2021. "Licorice ( Glycyrrhiza glabra )—Growth and Phytochemical Compound Secretion in Degraded Lands under Drought Stress," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-11, March.
    2. Jamal Jokar Arsanjani & Eric Vaz, 2017. "Special Issue Editorial: Earth Observation and Geoinformation Technologies for Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-5, May.

    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:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:6:p:581-:d:72394. 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.