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Acta Prataculturae Sinica ›› 2024, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (12): 1-12.DOI: 10.11686/cyxb2024050

   

Evaluation of vegetation-soil synergistic coupling in winter rangeland of the Qilian Mountains under different winter grazing management systems

Ze-hang YU1,2,3(), Yang YU1,2,3, Quan CAO1,2,3, Yu-zhen LIU1,2,3, Bin FENG1,2,3, Xiao-fang ZHANG1,2,3, Quan-min DONG1,2,3()   

  1. 1.Academy of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine,Qinghai University,Qinghai Academy of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science,Xining 810016,China
    2.Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory of Adaptive Management on Alpine Grassland,Xining 810016,China
    3.Key Laboratory of Alpine Grassland Ecosystem in the Three-River-Source,Ministry of Education,Xining 810016,China
  • Received:2024-02-05 Revised:2024-04-08 Online:2024-12-20 Published:2024-10-09
  • Contact: Quan-min DONG

Abstract:

The degree of synergistic coupling of the vegetation-soil system serves as a comprehensive evaluation index to measure the complementarity and integration of grassland ecosystem components, and is an important tool in implementing the quantitative management of grassland. This study was conducted in Yeniugou Township, Qilian County, Qinghai Province, and three different grazing management systems were compared: all feed from grazing in winter, winter grazing+supplemental feeding, and winter enclosure (no grazing). We constructed an evaluation system composed of vegetation factors and soil factors, and used the entropy power method to determine the weight of each index, and formulated a model to score the degree of synergistic coupling of the vegetation-soil system. It was found that there were significant differences in the Shannon-Wiener index and Patrick richness index of vegetation communities under the different grazing managements, and the grassland in the grazing+supplementary forage winter feeding system had the highest score, while that where grazed grassland comprised the total feed supply had the lowest score. There were significant differences in the contents of soil total carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, available potassium, and available phosphorus with different grazing management, and the highest soil system score was found in the grassland with no winter grazing, and the lowest in the grazed grassland with no feed supplementation. The score for the degree of synergistic coupling under the different grazing management systems ranked: enclosure (0.510)>grazing+supplementary feeding (0.482)>all feed from grazing (0.397). For the above three winter grazing systems, the grassland ecosystem could be categorized, respectively, as ‘barely coordinated vegetation-soil system lacking development’, ‘bordering on disordered vegetation-soil coordination lacking development’, and ‘mildly disordered vegetation-soil coordination with development recession’. In conclusion, winter enclosure of animals with no grazing by animals of grassland in the Qilian Mountain area was the most conducive to the health and stability of the ecosystem, among the three grazing systems evaluated, but still exhibited a less than optimal level of vegetation-soil coordination.

Key words: Qilian Mountains, grazing management, vegetation-soil system, synergistic coupling effects