Tree Diversity May Maintain Soil Fertility, Mitigate Effects of Climate Change, Study Says

By protecting tree diversity, the productivity of these trees is guaranteed. But more than that, such trees could even potentially boost the accumulation of nitrogen and carbon in the soil, which may, in turn, keep soil fertility and mitigate the effects of climate change.

Tree Diversity Promotes Soil Fertility, Carbon and Nitrogen Soil Storage

This was emphasized in a new study published in the Nature journal. The study covered an analysis of hundreds of plots from the National Forest Inventory of Canada. It was done to examine the links between tree diversity and soil nitrogen and carbon alteration in natural forests, specifically.

While there are several biodiversity-manipulation studies that have suggested that higher tree diversity levels may lead to higher carbon and nitrogen accumulation in forest soils, this recent study is the first to demonstrate similar findings in natural forests, as reported by SciTechDaily.

To evaluate these links, the scientists made use of the statistical technique known as structural equation modeling. They looked into data from two inventory censuses, namely, from 2008 to 2017 and from 2000 to 2006.

Tree diversity was quantified according to functional diversity, species evenness, and species richness. Functional diversity refers to the diversity of functional traits that a tree has within its community. Species evenness, on the other hand, relatively measures the abundance of a particular tree species, while species richness refers to the number of trees in a particular sample plot.

Procedure results revealed that higher tree diversity boosted carbon storage in the soil by around 30% to 32%. It also enhanced the storage of nitrogen by 42% to 50% on a timescale of ten years.

Peter Reich, the director of the Institute for Global Change Biology at the University of Michigan and a forest ecologist, explains that they discovered how higher tree diversity is linked to higher nitrogen and carbon accumulation.

Climate Change

Xinli Chen, a postdoctoral exchange fellow from the Institute for Global Change Biology and the University of Alberta, notes that the results emphasize that tree diversity does not just boost productivity but may also reduce degradation of soil and mitigate the effects of climate change.

Futurity adds that the diversity dividend has a large size. It supports how important it is for biodiversity in forests to be conserved, and it may support following efforts to focus on forests for the sequestration of both nitrogen and carbon.

The soils of forests play a vital role when it comes to carbon sequestration. Compared to that of living plants, these soils store three times as much carbon. Nitrogen, on the other hand, is a vital nutrient that promotes plant growth and carbon assimilation.

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