Combining land preparation and vegetation restoration for optimal soil eco-hydrological services in the Loess Plateau, China

Abstract In semiarid terrestrial ecosystems, optimized eco-rehabilitation strategies, such as land preparations and planting vegetation, are keys to achieve a successful ecological restoration. Land preparations and vegetation are supposed to have the coupled and respective impacts on soil ecosystem services, which are still unclear now. In this study, eighteen experimental plots with six different combinations and repetitions of land preparations and vegetation were built in the Chinese Loess Plateau in 2014 and soil moisture storages (SMS), soil carbon stocks (SCS) and other soil nutrient stocks were calculated at 0–100 cm, also the effects of land preparations and planting vegetation on …