Nutrient availability measurement techniques in arctic tundra soils: in situ ion exchange membranes compared to direct e
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Nutrient availability measurement techniques in arctic tundra soils: in situ ion exchange membranes compared to direct extraction Qian Gu & Paul Grogan
Received: 8 January 2020 / Accepted: 29 July 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Aims The use of ion exchange membranes (IEMs) as an alternative to direct chemical extractions for measuring soil nutrient availability has many theoretical advantages but was not well-investigated in the arctic. We compared the two methods in a low Arctic tundra ecosystem, and investigated the applicability of IEMs to determine experimental treatment effects on soil fertility and plant nutrient acquisition. Methods We compared IEM incubation and soil sample water-extraction methods to assess the intra-seasonal availabilities of ammonium, nitrate, and phosphate in tundra soils from experimental fertilization treatments. We determined plant species’ foliar nutrient concentrations in those treatments to evaluate the effectiveness of the two methods in predicting plant nutrient acquisition. We also incubated IEMs in summer greenhouse warming and snowfence treatment soils and investigated the corresponding plant community biomass responses. Results NH4-N accumulations on IEMs across the fertilization treatments were closely correlated to NH4-N pools obtained by soil extraction. However, the IEM Responsible Editor: Peter J. Gregory Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04658-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Q. Gu (*) : P. Grogan Department of Biology, Queen’s University, 116 Barrie StreetOntario K7L 3N6 Kingston, Canada e-mail: [email protected]
method was more sensitive and so was able to detect effects of low level fertilization that corresponded with increases in plant foliar nutrient concentrations. Furthermore, temporal pattern of IEM nutrient fluxes differed from the nutrient pools. The warming treatment enhanced phosphate but not ammonium fluxes, although plant community biomass increased. The snowfence treatment had no effects on either flux, and the overwinter fluxes of both nutrients were extremely low compared to the growing season. Conclusions We conclude that the IEM method is a relatively sensitive, simple, and effective method for measuring nutrient availability in tundra soils. Keywords Nitrogen . Phosphorus . Fertilization . Climate warming . Deepened snow . Plants’ response
Introduction Soil nutrient availability to plants is a fundamental determinant of terrestrial ecosystem structure and functioning (Chapin III et al. 2011), and therefore, choosing a suitable measuring method to determine this availability is very important. Two major factors determine the availability of nutrient ions to the plant root systems: (1) the concentrations of ions in the soil solution within the plant rhizosphere (i.e. the pool of ions immediately accessible by plants); and (2) supply of additional ions from outside the rhizosphere to the root surfac
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