Daily variation characteristics of CO_2 emission fluxes and contributions of environmental factors in semiarid grassland of Inner Mongolia, China

Soil respiration refers to the process of soil gener-ating and emitting CO2to the atmosphere under the synthetic effect of different environmental factors,which includes mineralization of soil organic matter involved by microorganism and respiration of plant root system and soil animals.The emission of CO2to the atmosphere through soil respiration is the most important link of carbon cycle process of grassland ecosystem,and also the key ecological process of grassland ecosystem exerting effec…

Daily variation characteristics of CO2 emission fluxes and contributions of environmental factors in semiarid grassland of Inner Mongolia, China

Fixed field experimental studies are carried out on daily variations of the undisturbed community and soil respiration fluxes in different phenological phases of 2001-2002 in semiarid Aneurolepidium chinense steppe of Inner Mongolia, China using static black chamber method. Corresponding statistical analysis of the contributions of the water-heat factors (air temperature, ground temperature, surface soil water content) and ecological factors (aboveground biomass, underground biomass, litter biomass) to daily variation law of the undisturbed community and soil respiration fluxes as well as differences in daily respiration are also conducted. The results indicate that undisturbed community and soil respiration have apparent daily variation laws, daily variation patterns of respiration fluxes during different phenological phases are basically the same, and the variations of environmental factors only exert effect on CO2 emission intensities, while the effect on daily variation pattern of grassland CO2 emission fluxes is relatively small. The daily total respiration of the undisturbed community in different phenological phases ranges from 1.34-10.13 g·m-2; soil daily total respiration ranges from 0.98-5.17 g·m-2; both daily variations of undisturbed community and soil respiration fluxes are significantly correlated (p < 0.05) or extremely significantly correlated (p < 0.01) with air temperatures and ground surface temperatures, but the correlativity with the soil temperature at 5 and 10 cm depths is relatively weak; multiple regression analysis indicates that about 80% of the difference in daily respiration of the undisturbed community among different phenological phases is induced by the variation of the aboveground biomass, while the variations of the remaining factors can jointly explain around 20% of the daily respiration variations of the whole grassland ecosystem; about 83% of the soil daily respiration variation of the different phenological phases is caused by 0-20 cm underground biomass. Besides, surface soil water content is also an important environmental factor affecting soil daily respiration variations of the Aneurolepidium chinense steppe, but its partial correlation coefficient with soil daily respiration amount does not reach the significance level of 0.05.