IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0136578.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Warmer and Wetter Soil Stimulates Assimilation More than Respiration in Rainfed Agricultural Ecosystem on the China Loess Plateau: The Role of Partial Plastic Film Mulching Tillage

Author

Listed:
  • Daozhi Gong
  • Weiping Hao
  • Xurong Mei
  • Xiang Gao
  • Qi Liu
  • Kelly Caylor

Abstract

Effects of agricultural practices on ecosystem carbon storage have acquired widespread concern due to its alleviation of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Recently, combining of furrow-ridge with plastic film mulching in spring maize ecosystem was widely applied to boost crop water productivity in the semiarid regions of China. However, there is still limited information about the potentials for increased ecosystem carbon storage of this tillage method. The objective of this study was to quantify and contrast net carbon dioxide exchange, biomass accumulation and carbon budgets of maize (Zea maize L.) fields under the traditional non-mulching with flat tillage (CK) and partial plastic film mulching with furrow-ridge tillage (MFR) on the China Loess Plateau. Half-hourly net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE) of both treatments were synchronously measured with two eddy covariance systems during the growing seasons of 2011 through 2013. At same time green leaf area index (GLAI) and biomass were also measured biweekly. Compared with CK, the warmer and wetter (+1.3°C and +4.3%) top soil at MFR accelerated the rates of biomass accumulation, promoted greater green leaf area and thus shortened the growing seasons by an average value of 10.4 days for three years. MFR stimulated assimilation more than respiration during whole growing season, resulting in a higher carbon sequestration in terms of NEE of -79 gC/m2 than CK. However, after considering carbon in harvested grain (or aboveground biomass), there is a slight higher carbon sink (or a stronger carbon source) in MFR due to its greater difference of aboveground biomass than that of grain between both treatments. These results demonstrate that partial plastic film mulched furrow-ridge tillage with aboveground biomass exclusive of grain returned to the soil is an effective way to enhance simultaneously carbon sequestration and grain yield of maize in the semiarid regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Daozhi Gong & Weiping Hao & Xurong Mei & Xiang Gao & Qi Liu & Kelly Caylor, 2015. "Warmer and Wetter Soil Stimulates Assimilation More than Respiration in Rainfed Agricultural Ecosystem on the China Loess Plateau: The Role of Partial Plastic Film Mulching Tillage," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-20, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0136578
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0136578
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0136578
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0136578&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0136578?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Feng, Yu & Gong, Daozhi & Mei, Xurong & Hao, Weiping & Tang, Dahua & Cui, Ningbo, 2017. "Energy balance and partitioning in partial plastic mulched and non-mulched maize fields on the Loess Plateau of China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 193-206.
    2. Wang, Hongli & Zhang, Xucheng & Zhang, Guoping & Yu, Xianfeng & Hou, Huizhi & Fang, Yanjie & Ma, Yifan & Lei, Kangning, 2022. "Mulching coordinated the seasonal soil hydrothermal relationships and promoted maize productivity in a semi-arid rainfed area on the Loess Plateau," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 263(C).
    3. Jiang, Shouzheng & Wu, Jie & Wang, Zhihui & He, Ziling & Wang, Mingjun & Yao, Weiwei & Feng, Yu, 2023. "Spatiotemporal variations of cropland carbon sequestration and water loss across China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    4. Thidar, Myint & Gong, Daozhi & Mei, Xurong & Gao, Lili & Li, Haoru & Hao, Weiping & Gu, Fengxue, 2020. "Mulching improved soil water, root distribution and yield of maize in the Loess Plateau of Northwest China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    5. Feng, Yu & Hao, Weiping & Gao, Lili & Li, Haoru & Gong, Daozhi & Cui, Ningbo, 2019. "Comparison of maize water consumption at different scales between mulched and non-mulched croplands," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 315-324.
    6. Gong, Daozhi & Mei, Xurong & Hao, Weiping & Wang, Hanbo & Caylor, Kelly K., 2017. "Comparison of multi-level water use efficiency between plastic film partially mulched and non-mulched croplands at eastern Loess Plateau of China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 215-226.
    7. Fan, Yaqiong & Ding, Risheng & Kang, Shaozhong & Hao, Xinmei & Du, Taisheng & Tong, Ling & Li, Sien, 2017. "Plastic mulch decreases available energy and evapotranspiration and improves yield and water use efficiency in an irrigated maize cropland," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 122-131.
    8. Li, Yue & Feng, Hao & Wu, Wenjie & Jiang, Yu & Sun, Jian & Zhang, Yuefang & Cheng, Hui & Li, Cheng & Dong, Qin’ge & Siddique, Kadambot H.M. & Chen, Ji, 2022. "Decreased greenhouse gas intensity of winter wheat production under plastic film mulching in semi-arid areas," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 274(C).
    9. Zhang, Feng & Zhang, Wenjuan & Li, Ming & Zhang, Yuan & Li, Fengmin & Li, Changbin, 2017. "Is crop biomass and soil carbon storage sustainable with long-term application of full plastic film mulching under future climate change?," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 67-77.
    10. Gong, Daozhi & Mei, Xurong & Hao, Weiping & Wang, Hanbo & Caylor, Kelly K., 2017. "Comparison of ET partitioning and crop coefficients between partial plastic mulched and non-mulched maize fields," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 23-34.
    11. Chai, Yuwei & Chai, Qiang & Yang, Changgang & Chen, Yuzhang & Li, Rui & Li, Yawei & Chang, Lei & Lan, Xuemei & Cheng, Hongbo & Chai, Shouxi, 2022. "Plastic film mulching increases yield, water productivity, and net income of rain-fed winter wheat compared with no mulching in semiarid Northwest China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 262(C).
    12. Chen, Baoqing & Liu, Enke & Mei, Xurong & Yan, Changrong & Garré, Sarah, 2018. "Modelling soil water dynamic in rain-fed spring maize field with plastic mulching," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 19-27.
    13. Liu, Pei & Wang, Hongli & Li, Linchao & Liu, Xiaoli & Qian, Rui & Wang, Jinjin & Yan, Xiaoqun & Cai, Tie & Zhang, Peng & Jia, Zhikuan & Ren, Xiaolong & Chen, Xiaoli, 2020. "Ridge-furrow mulching system regulates hydrothermal conditions to promote maize yield and efficient water use in rainfed farming area," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:plo:pone00:0136578. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.