Soil quality improvement on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau induced by soil hydrothermal changes from 1980s to 2020s
Kuan Chen,
Jingyao Suo,
Xiaodong Song,
Yiyao Liu,
Xiang Xiang,
Yingping Pan,
Jiarui Wang,
Liang Ren,
Xiaodong Ge,
Xia Xu,
Xiuchen Wu,
Lei Duan,
Yongmei Huang
Affiliations
Kuan Chen
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Jingyao Suo
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Xiaodong Song
State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Yiyao Liu
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Xiang Xiang
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Yingping Pan
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Jiarui Wang
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Liang Ren
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Xiaodong Ge
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Xia Xu
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Xiuchen Wu
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Lei Duan
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Yongmei Huang
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Corresponding author at: State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), as the world’s Third Pole, has experienced a sharp trend of warming and humidifying in recent decades within the context of global climate change. Under these circumstances, the soil nutrient cycling has been significantly modified. However, whether the soil quality had changed over recent decades on QTP remains unclear. In this study, we calculated, and drew high-resolution maps of the soil quality index (SQI) on QTP using soil property data in 1980s and 2020s. Results showed significantly an increasing trend of soil quality over the past four decades. The variation in trends of four typical ecosystems, more specifically, alpine cushion vegetation showing the most notable increase, followed by alpine meadow and alpine steppe, while forest & shrub exhibiting the smallest increase in soil quality. This implied that regions with more significant SQI changes correspond to stronger climate change. Through attribution analysis of 10 factors affecting the variation in SQI, including climate, soil hydrothermal, vegetation, and human activities, we found that the improvement in soil quality were predominantly driven by soil hydrothermal conditions. Additionally, we observed a pronounced increase in nitrogen limitation, with the factors contributing to this trend varying across different ecosystems. Our study emphasizes the warning of intensified nitrogen limitation, and, under the context of climate change, this phenomenon is likely to become increasingly severe in the future.
