Plant diversity effects on aboveground and belowground N pools in temperate grassland ecosystems: Development in the first 5 years after establishment
[1] Biodiversity is expected to improve ecosystem services, e.g., productivity or seepage water quality. The current view of plant diversity effects on element cycling is based on short-term grassland studies that discount possibly slow belowground feedbacks to aboveground diversity. Furthermore, these grasslands were established on formerly arable land associated with changes in soil properties, e.g., accumulation of organic matter. We hypothesize that the plant diversity-N cycle relationship changes with time since establishment. We assessed the relationship between plant diversity and (1) aboveground and soil N storage and (2) NO3-N and NH4-N availability in soil between 2003 and 2007 in…
Trace element variability in single ostracod valves as a proxy for hydrochemical change in Nam Co, central Tibet, during the Holocene
Ostracod shells, belonging to three taxa (Leucocytherella sinensis Huang, 1982, ?Leucocythere dorsotuberosa Huang, 1982 and ?L. dorsotuberosa f. postilirata sensu Pang, 1985), were collected from two sediment cores from Lake Nam Co, on the central Tibetan Plateau. Two variants of LA–ICP–MS (laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry), spot and line-scan analyses, were used to investigate trace element concentrations (Mg, Sr, Ba, U and rare earth elements [REEs]) in single ostracod shells. The results suggest that the line-scan method can provide better precision than the spot analysis and is therefore preferred. No significant difference in trace element composition between…