[Impact of heavy snow storm and freezing rain disasters on soil fauna in Chinese fir plantation in southern China].
In January 2008, southern China suffered an unusual heavy snowstorm and freezing rain over a large area for almost a month long. This catastrophic event was the worst one in past 50 years, which brought the area a serious impact on the infrastructure, ecology, and environment. To understand the long-term impact of this catastrophic event on the forest ecosystems in this area, a field investigation was conducted on the soil fauna in a pure Chinese fir plantation and a mixed Chinese fir plantation-alder plantation in Huitong County of Hunan Province on March 23, 2008, the date 40 days after the heavy snowstorm and freezing rain. With the abundance and community composition as the main parameters and the monitoring data from the two plantations on March 23, 2007 as the reference, the flexibility and resistance of soil fauna to the disturbances of the catastrophic event was preliminarily evaluated. The results showed that there was a significant deviation of soil fauna communities in the two plantations from the reference. An outbreak increase in microfauna nematode abundance was found from 12216.9 ind x m(-2) to 118343.9 ind x m(-2) in pure Chinese fir plantation and from 25435.9 ind x m(-2) to 84573.0 ind x m(-2) in mixed Chinese fir plantation-alder plantation, while a 27.0% and 85.6% decrease of macrofauna abundance was found in the two plantations, respectively, compared with the reference. Mesofauna abundance also had a significant decrease in litter layer but not in soil. The abundance recovery displayed a trend from quick rate for microfauna to slow rate for macrofauna, which indicated that the soil fauna functional groups, in terms of body size, could be used as a vulnerable indicator in evaluating disturbance event and post-disturbance recovery. By using community ordinations, no shift in soil fauna community composition was detected 40 days after the catastrophic event, suggesting that the community composition of soil invertebrate had a high resistance to catastrophic snowstorm and freezing rain disturbances.
Yan
Shao-kui
SK
Huitong Experimental Station of Forest Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China. yan@soilbio.com
Zhang
Wei-dong
WD
Liu
Yan-xin
YX
Fu
Sheng-lei
SL
Li
Yuan-liang
YL
Wang
Si-long
SL
D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D032486:Cunninghamia / Q000254:growth & development*; D004190:Disasters; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D007448:Invertebrates / Q000254:growth & development; D009348:Nematoda / Q000254:growth & development*; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011891:Rain; D012914:Snow; D012987:Soil / Q000469:parasitology*
D012987:Soil