摘要
The typical steppe ecosystems in China are now being increasingly degraded due mainly toovergrazing. To determine the limiting nutrients is of significance in order to find out ways of successfullyrestoring the degraded steppe. In addition to field fertilization experiments, N:P stoichiometry is an alternative,but argumentative tool to study nutrient limitation. In this study, we used these two approaches to identifythe most limiting nutrient element at the species level. Furthermore, nutrient addition experimentprovides an effective means to test our hypothesis that N:P stoichiometry will remain constant becauserelatively narrow range of N:P ratio in tissues of the terrestrial plants is an important adaptive mechanismfor plants to survive on earth. For these purposes, we designed a field experiment to examine theresponses of biomass and N:P stoichiometry of the two dominant species -- Leyrnus chinensis (Trin.)Tzvel. and Carex korshinskyiKom. -- to N fertilization at rates of O, 5, 15, 30, 50 and 80 g NH4NO3.m-2.a-~in two adjacent sites, one being excluded animal grazing for 22 years (site A), and another being free ofgrazing for only two years (site B) before the experiment was carried out. No effects of N fertilization weredetected in the first year as reflected by the aboveground biomass and P concentrations of the twospecies. The regression analysis showed that N:P ratios of two species of both sites remained constant inthe second year. N fertilization significantly increased the N concentrations of two species in both years,while only significantly increased the P contents of the two species in the second year. N and P contentsof the two species were significantly correlated in all cases in 2001. Our results suggest that theL. chinensis was in short of N in site B while the growth of C. korshinskyi was limited by P in site A, andthere is a significant synergistic relationship between tissue N and P concentrations in 2001. Our hypothesiswas valid on the species level since N:P ratio of the two species remained constant with increasing Napplication rates after two years of fertilization. We argue that it may be inappropriate to define an ecosystemwhich is limited by certain nutrient elements since the responses of coexisting species present in acommunity to nutrient additions can vary tremendously.
