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Responses of soil enzyme activities to re-vegetation in gully Loess Plateau of Northwest China.

LI Lin-hai1,2, QIU Li-ping3, MENG Meng4   

  1. (1Beijing Museum of Nature History, Beijing 100050, China; 2College of Biological Science and Technology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China; 3Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwest A & F University, Yangling 712100, Shaanxi, China; 4China Wildlife Conservation Association, Beijing 100714, China)
  • Online:2012-12-18 Published:2012-12-18

Abstract: In combining field investigation with laboratory analysis, this paper studied the distribution characteristics of soil enzyme activities along the soil profiles and natural slopes with different re-vegetation treatments in gully Loess Plateau, aimed to assess the responses of the soil enzyme activities to re-vegetation. In the study area, the activities of soil urease, invertase and alkaline phosphatase along natural slopes were highly varied, but the activity of soil catalase was in adverse. The profile distribution of the soil enzyme activities varied significantly with vegetation type, and with increasing soil depth, the activities of soil urease, invertase and alkaline phosphatase decreased while the catalase activity increased. There existed significant positive correlation among the three hydrolases activities. The activities of the three hydrolases were all significantly negatively correlated with soil physical properties and positively correlated with soil chemical properties, while the soil catalase activity was positively correlated with soil moisture content and pH and negatively correlated with other soil physiochemical properties. It was suggested that the activities of soil urease, invertase and alkaline phosphatase in gully Loess Plateau could be used as the sensitive indicators for the soil responses to the re-vegetation in the Plateau, and re-vegetation could improve the biological properties in both surface and deeper soil layers.