Effects of warming and precipitation changes on soil organic carbon and enzyme activities in semi-arid wheatland fields on the Loess Plateau of central Gansu Province,China
Farmland ecosystems are strongly affected by climate change,but the effects of global warming and pre-cipitation changes and their interactions on soil organic carbon and enzyme activities in farmland soils and their rela-tionships are still poorly understood.In this study,we employed the Open-Top Chamber(OTC)warming platform and the precipitation manipulative platform to investigate the effects of warming and precipitation changes on soil organic carbon and enzyme activities in semi-arid spring wheat farmland in Loess Plateau of the central Gansu Pro-vince.There were six treatments:control(CK),30%precipitation reduction(-P30),30%precipitation increase(+P30),warming(W),warming and 30%precipitation reduction(W-P30),and warming and 30%precipitation increase(W+P30).The results showed that OTC warming significantly elevated soil organic carbon(SOC),micro-bial biomass carbon(MBC),readily oxidizable organic carbon(KMnO4-C),dissolved organic carbon(DOC),and particulate organic carbon(POC)contents.In contrast,the mineral associated organic carbon(MAOC)con-tent changed little.Under ambient temperature,neither an increase nor a decrease in precipitation resulted in a sig-nificant alteration of soil organic carbon fractions.However,under the warming condition,elevated precipitation resulted in a notable enhancement in DOC and POC contents.Warming and precipitation significantly interacted to affect SOC,DOC,and KMnO4-C contents.The interaction between precipitation and warming resulted in an increase in the carbon pool management index(CMI),the carbon pool index(CPI),the activity of soil cellobiose hydrolase,urease,sucrase,N-acetyl-β-D-glucosidase,as well as crop biomass.The correlations between soil tem-perature,moisture,soil organic carbon fractions and enzyme activities were positive.There was a negative correla-tion between soil temperature and sucrase activity.The random forest modelling analysis demonstrated that soil physicochemical properties,enzyme activities,temperature and water content together explained 52.4%to 71.1%,and the five factors with higher correlation importance were soil urease activity,soil temperature,soil moisture,soil N-acetyl-β-D-glucosidase activity,and effective phosphorus.However,the selected factors only accounted for 21.5%of the observed variation in MAOC content.In conclusion,warming and precipitation changes significantly affected soil properties,enzyme activities and crop biomass,and thus soil organic carbon pools,in semi-arid wheat-land soil of Loess Plateau of central Gansu Province.