title: A Survey of Soil Enzyme Activities along Major Roads in Beijing: The Implications for Traffic Corridor Green Space Management.
abstract: Soil quality is critical to the management of urban green space, in particular, along traffic corridors where traffic-related air pollution is significant. Soil quality can be evaluated by soil enzyme activities, which show quick responses to both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. In this study, we investigated three soil enzyme activities (i.e., dehydrogenase, catalase and urease) along the major roads in urban areas of Beijing. Results show the activities of dehydrogenase, catalase and urease in urban samples were 58.8%, 68.2% and 48.5% less than the rural sample, respectively. The content of fluorescent amino acids as indicators of microbial activities was also consistently lower in urban samples than the rural. We observed two times greater exposure of particulate material along the roadsides in urban areas than rural areas. Although traffic air pollutants provide some nutrient sources to stimulate the URE activity, the exposure to traffic-related air pollution leads to the substantial decrease in enzyme activities. There were significant negative correlations for exposure to PM10 with DHA (r = -0.8267, p = 0.0017) and CAT (r = -0.89, p = 0.0002) activities. For the urban soils URE activity increased with the increasing of PM. We conclude that the degraded soil quality can negatively affect the target of developing plants and green spaces along the traffic corridors to mitigate the traffic impact. This study suggests the investigation of integrated strategies to restore the soil quality, reinforce the ecological service functions of green spaces along the traffic corridors and reduce the traffic pollutants.
authors.affiliation: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. tianxinli@ustb.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Tianxin
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. linglongmeng2013@126.com.
authors.forename: Linglong
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. uwiherman05@yahoo.fr.|The State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. uwiherman05@yahoo.fr.
authors.forename: Uwizeyimana
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Herman
authors.affiliation: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. Zhongming.Lu@gatech.edu.|Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Georgia Institute of Technology, 828 West Peachtree Street, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. Zhongming.Lu@gatech.edu.
authors.forename: Zhongming
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. john.crittenden@ce.gatech.edu.|Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Georgia Institute of Technology, 828 West Peachtree Street, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. john.crittenden@ce.gatech.edu.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Crittenden
mesh_terms: D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D000068476:Beijing; D002374:Catalase / Q000378:metabolism; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010088:Oxidoreductases / Q000378:metabolism; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D012989:Soil Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D014510:Urease / Q000378:metabolism; D001335:Vehicle Emissions / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D012987:Soil; D012989:Soil Pollutants; D001335:Vehicle Emissions; D010088:Oxidoreductases; D002374:Catalase; D014510:Urease
keywords: Beijing; green space management; soil degradation; soil enzymes; traffic pollutants