Investigating Land-Use Change on Street Tree Ecosystems

In the early 1940’s, during the early stages of the Manhattan Project (WWII), of rural communities in Anderson County, Tennessee was rapidly converted into laboratory facilities and the city of Oak Ridge. The environment that became Oak Ridge experienced not only pollutants from the laboratory activities, but also alterations from the land-use change?from rural to urban areas. Therefore, a study was conducted to determine the impacts of land-use change from rural to urban area on 1) street tree diversity and performance;and 2) the biological, chemical and physical properties, and nutrient dynamics of street tree ecosystem soils. There were a total of 607 street trees, composed of 37 different species, on the five main roadways in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The street tree inventory revealed that the street tree ecosystems had a high relative abundance of Acer rubrum (21.91%) and Pyrus calleryana (19.93%). Chemical, rather than physical, soil and site properties in street tree ecosystems had the greatest impact on street tree performance. Soils differed street by street in their biological, chemical, and physical properties but were not influenced by traffic rates. There were also differences in soil microbial biomass carbon (MBC) during the winter on streets based on their diversity of trees;however, the most diverse street was among the lowest in soil microbial biomass. Seasonally, the winter proved to have not only greater amounts of soil microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen (MBN), but significantly less extractable organic carbon (EOC) and nitrogen (EON) and total labile carbon (TLC) than that in the spring. Overall, this study provided insights into the post urbanization impacts on the street trees, soils, sites, and nutrient dynamics within street tree ecosystems of Oak Ridge.

Opposite effects of nitrogen fertilization and plastic film mulching on crop N and P stoichiometry in a temperate agroecosystem

Aims Crop nitrogen(N)and phosphorus(P)stoichiometry can influence food nutritive quality and many ecosystem processes.However,how and why N and P stoichiometry respond to long-term agricul-tural management practices(e.g.N fertilization and film mulching)are not clearly understood.Methods We collected maize tissues(leaf,stem,root and seed)and soil sam-ples from a temperate cropland under 30-year continuous N fer-tilization and plastic film mulching treatments,measured their C,N and P concentrations(the proportion(%)relative to the sample mass),and used structural equation models to uncover the re-sponding mechanisms for crop N and P contents(the total amount(g/m2)in crop biomass).Important Findings Long-term N fertilization increased N concentrations in all crop tissues but sharply decreased P concentrations in vegetative tis-sues(leaf,stem and root),thereby reducing their C/N ratio and increasing C/P and N/P ratios.The drop in P concentration in vegetative tissues was due to the dilution effect by biomass in-crement and the priority of P supply for seed production.In con-trast,film mulching decreased N concentration but increased P concentrations in most crop tissues,thereby increasing C/N ratio and reducing C/P and N/P ratios.Film mulching increased crop P content by increasing soil temperature and moisture;whereas,mulching showed little effect on crop N content,because a posi-tive effects of soil temperature may have canceled out a negative effect by soil moisture.This indicated a decoupling of P and N uptake by crops under film mulching.In conclusion,N fertiliza-tion and plastic film mulching showed opposite effects of on crop N and P stoichiometry.