Effects of prescribed burning and seasonal and interannual climate variation.pdfVIP

Soil Biology Biochemistry 41 (2009) 796–803 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Soil Biology Biochemistry journal homepage: /locate/soilbio Effects of prescribed burning and seasonal and interannual climate variation on nitrogen mineralization in a typical steppe in Inner Mongolia a,b a ¨ a, b a, * Lishi Zhou , Jianhui Huang , Fumei Lu , Xingguo Han a State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiangshan, Beijing 100093, China b Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yuquanlu, Beijing 100049, China a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Fires in grasslands significantly alter nutrient cycling processes. Seasonal climatic changes can interact Received 25 August 2008 with fire to further modify nutrient cycling processes. To investigate the effects of fire on soil nitrogen Received in revised form transformation processes and their seasonal change and interannual variability in a typical steppe in 16 January 2009 Inner Mongolia, we determined the rates of net nitrogen mineralization and nitrification over two Accepted 20 January 2009 growing seasons and a winter following a prescribed spring fire in May 2006. Fire significantly decreased Available online 10 February 2009 rates of both net ni