Dataset Information

Short-Term Response of Sasa Dwarf Bamboo to a Change of Soil Nitrogen Fertility in a Forest Ecosystem in Northern Hokkaido, Japan.

ABSTRACT: In forest ecosystems, a change of soil nitrogen (N) cycling after disturbance is regulated by various factors. Sasa dwarf bamboo (hereafter referred to as Sasa) is an understory plant that grows thickly on the forest floor in northern Hokkaido, Japan. However, the ecosystem function of Sasa after disturbances in the soil N cycling is not fully understood. The purpose of this study was to determine the short-term response of Sasa to a change of soil N fertility. Biomass, litterfall, litter decomposition, soil N pool, and N leaching from soil were measured in control, and low- (5 g N m(-2) year(-1)) and high-N (15 g N m(-2) year(-1)) addition plots. Sasa immobilized much N as the soil N fertility increased. However, the leaf N concentration in aboveground biomass did not increase, suggesting that the N in leaves was maintained because of the increase of leaf biomass. As a result, the decomposition and mineralization rates of the produced litter before and after N addition were comparable among plots, even though the soil inorganic N fertility increased greatly. These results suggest that immediate response of Sasa to an increase of soil inorganic N mitigates the excess N leaching from soil.

SUBMITTER: Watanabe T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4931399 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Short-Term Response of Sasa Dwarf Bamboo to a Change of Soil Nitrogen Fertility in a Forest Ecosystem in Northern Hokkaido, Japan.

Watanabe Tsunehiro T Fukuzawa Karibu K Shibata Hideaki H

Plants (Basel, Switzerland) 20160414 2

In forest ecosystems, a change of soil nitrogen (N) cycling after disturbance is regulated by various factors. Sasa dwarf bamboo (hereafter referred to as Sasa) is an understory plant that grows thickly on the forest floor in northern Hokkaido, Japan. However, the ecosystem function of Sasa after disturbances in the soil N cycling is not fully understood. The purpose of this study was to determine the short-term response of Sasa to a change of soil N fertility. Biomass, litterfall, litter decomp ...[more]

PMID: 27135238

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Project description:Wintering Sasa senanensis, dwarf bamboo, is known to employ deep supercooling as the mechanism of cold hardiness in most of its tissues from leaves to rhizomes. The breakdown of supercooling in leaf blades has been shown to proceed in a random and scattered manner with a small piece of tissue surrounded by longitudinal and transverse veins serving as the unit of freezing. The unique cold hardiness mechanism of this plant was further characterized using current year leaf blades. Cold hardiness levels (LT20: the lethal temperature at which 20% of the leaf blades are injured) seasonally increased from August (-11°C) to December (-20°C). This coincided with the increases in supercooling capability of the leaf blades as expressed by the initiation temperature of low temperature exotherms (LTE) detected in differential thermal analyses (DTA). When leaf blades were stored at -5°C for 1-14 days, there was no nucleation of the supercooled tissue units either in summer or winter. However, only summer leaf blades suffered significant injury after prolonged supercooling of the tissue units. This may be a novel type of low temperature-induced injury in supercooled state at subfreezing temperatures. When winter leaf blades were maintained at the threshold temperature (-20°C), a longer storage period (1-7 days) increased lethal freezing of the supercooled tissue units. Within a wintering shoot, the second or third leaf blade from the top was most cold hardy and leaf blades at lower positions tended to suffer more injury due to lethal freezing of the supercooled units. LTE were shifted to higher temperatures (2-5°C) after a lethal freeze-thaw cycle. The results demonstrate that the tissue unit compartmentalized with longitudinal and transverse veins serves as the unit of supercooling and temperature- and time-dependent freezing of the units is lethal both in laboratory freeze tests and in the field. To establish such supercooling in the unit, structural ice barriers such as development of sclerenchyma and biochemical mechanisms to increase the stability of supercooling are considered important. These mechanisms are discussed in regard to ecological and physiological significance in winter survival.

Dataset Information

Short-Term Response of Sasa Dwarf Bamboo to a Change of Soil Nitrogen Fertility in a Forest Ecosystem in Northern Hokkaido, Japan.

Publications

Short-Term Response of Sasa Dwarf Bamboo to a Change of Soil Nitrogen Fertility in a Forest Ecosystem in Northern Hokkaido, Japan.

Similar Datasets

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