Relative Importance of Plant Species Composition and Environmental Factors in Affecting Soil Carbon Stocks of Alpine Pastures (NW Italy)
| Autor: | Fabio Petrella, Fabrizio Ungaro, Simone Ravetto Enri, Andrea Mainetti, Michele Lonati, Laura Zavattaro, Giampiero Lombardi |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
elevation Agriculture (General) mountain Climate change Plant Science precipitation 01 natural sciences Pasture Grassland Ecosystem services S1-972 vegetation Precipitation 0105 earth and related environmental sciences 2. Zero hunger geography geography.geographical_feature_category Land use Ecology pH Global warming forage 04 agricultural and veterinary sciences Vegetation 15. Life on land 13. Climate action slope 040103 agronomy & agriculture 0401 agriculture forestry and fisheries Environmental science grassland Agronomy and Crop Science Food Science |
| Zdroj: | Agriculture, Vol 11, Iss 1047, p 1047 (2021) Agriculture (Basel) 11 (2021): Article number 1047–24. doi:10.3390/agriculture11111047 info:cnr-pdr/source/autori:Ravetto Enri, S.; Petrella, F.; Ungaro, F.; Zavattaro, L.; Mainetti, A.; Lombardi, G.; Lonati, M./titolo:Relative Importance of Plant Species Composition and Environmental Factors in Affecting Soil Carbon Stocks of Alpine Pastures (NW Italy)/doi:10.3390%2Fagriculture11111047/rivista:Agriculture (Basel)/anno:2021/pagina_da:Article number 1047/pagina_a:24/intervallo_pagine:Article number 1047–24/volume:11 Agriculture Volume 11 Issue 11 |
| ISSN: | 2077-0472 |
| Popis: | Alpine pastures are agricultural systems with a high provision of ecosystem services, which include carbon (C) stocking. Particularly, the soil organic C (SOC) stocks of Alpine pastures may play a pivotal role in counteracting global climate change. Even if the importance of pasture SOC has been stated by several research studies, especially by comparing different land uses, little is known about the role of plant species composition. We studied a wide sample of 324 pastures in the north-western Italian Alps by performing coupled vegetation and soil surveys. Climatic (i.e., mean annual precipitation), topographic (i.e., elevation, slope, southness), vegetation (i.e., the first three dimensions of a non-metric multid imensional scaling—NMDS), and soil (i.e., pH) parameters were considered as independent variables in a generalised linear model accounting for SOC stocks in the 0–30 cm depth. Pasture SOC was significantly affected by precipitation (positively) and by pH (negatively) but not by topography. However, the higher influence was exerted by vegetation through the first NMDS dimension, which depicted a change in plant species along a thermic-altitudinal gradient. Our research highlighted the remarkable importance of vegetation in regulating SOC stocks in Alpine pastures, confirming the pivotal role of these semi-natural agricultural systems in the global scenario of climate change. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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