Organic Management Mediates Multifunctionality Responses to Land Conversion from Longan (<i>Dimocarpus longan</i>) to Tea Plantations at the Aggregate Level

Abstract

Soil aggregates, which are highly influenced by land conversion, play key roles in driving soil nutrient distribution and microbial colonization. However, the role of soil aggregates in shaping the responses of microbial community composition and multiple ecosystem functions, especially ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF), to land conversion remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the impact of the conversion of a longan orchard (LO) to a conventional tea plantation (CTP) and organic tea plantation (OTP) on soil EMF at the aggregate level and explored the underlying mechanism. Our results showed that EMF was significantly reduced in the conventional tea plantation, with 3.44, 1.79, and 1.24 times for large macro-, macro-, and micro-aggregates. In contrast, it was relatively preserved in the organic tea plantation. Notably, micro-aggregates with higher microbial biomass supported more EMF than larger aggregates under the land conversion conditions. The EMF associated with soil aggregates was found to be regulated by the differences in nutrient content and microbial community composition. Random forest analysis, redundancy analysis, and Pearson analysis indicated that both soil nutrient and microbial community composition within soil aggregates jointly determined EMF. This study highlights that soil aggregation influences the stratification of nutrients and microbial communities, which leads to the differing response of aggregate-related EMF to land conversion.

Keywords

• ecosystem multifunctionality
• soil aggregate
• land conversion
• organic tea plantation
• microbial community
• soil nutrient