Patterns of above-and belowground biomass allocation in China's grasslands:Evidence from individual-level observations

作     者：WANG Liang NIU KeChang YANG YuanHe ZHOU Peng 

作者机构：Department of EcologyKey Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of EducationPeking UniversityBeijing 100871China 

出 版 物：《Science China(Life Sciences)》 (中国科学(生命科学英文版))

年 卷 期：2010年第53卷第7期

页      面：851-857页

核心收录：

学科分类：090503[农学-草业科学] 0909[农学-草学] 0905[农学-畜牧学] 09[农学] 0903[农学-农业资源与环境] 

基　　金：supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 30870381) the Key Project of Scientific and Technical Supporting Programs Funded by the Ministry of Science & Technology of China (Grant No. 2007BAC06B01) 

主　　题：aboveground biomass allometry alpine grassland belowground biomass Inner Mongolia isometric relationship root:shoot ratio temperate grassland Tibetan Plateau 

摘      要：Above-and belowground biomass allocation not only influences growth of individual plants,but also influences vegetation structures and functions,and consequently impacts soil carbon input as well as terrestrial ecosystem carbon ***,due to sampling difficulties,a considerable amount of uncertainty remains about the root:shoot ratio(R/S),a key parameter for models of terrestrial ecosystem carbon *** investigated biomass allocation patterns across a broad spatial *** collected data on individual plant biomass and systematically sampled along a transect across the temperate grasslands in Inner Mongolia as well as in the alpine grasslands on the Tibetan *** results indicated that the median of R/S for herbaceous species was 0.78 in China s grasslands as a whole.R/S was significantly higher in temperate grasslands than in alpine grasslands(0.84 vs.0.65).The slope of the allometric relationship between above-and belowground biomass was steeper for temperate grasslands than for *** results did not support the hypothesis that aboveground biomass scales isometrically with belowground *** R/S in China s grasslands was not significantly correlated with mean annual temperature(MAT) or mean annual precipitation(MAP).Moreover,comparisons of our results with previous findings indicated a large difference between R/S data from individual plants and *** might be mainly caused by the underestimation of R/S at the individual level as a result of an inevitable loss of fine roots and the overestimation of R/S in community-level surveys due to grazing and difficulties in identifying dead *** findings suggest that root biomass in grasslands tended to have been overestimated in previous reports of R/S.