Articles | Volume 6, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/se-6-1195-2015
https://doi.org/10.5194/se-6-1195-2015
Research article
 | 
05 Nov 2015
Research article |  | 05 Nov 2015

Short-term grazing exclusion has no impact on soil properties and nutrients of degraded alpine grassland in Tibet, China

X. Lu, Y. Yan, J. Sun, X. Zhang, Y. Chen, X. Wang, and G. Cheng

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Short summary
Grazing exclusion has been widely adopted to restore degraded grasslands in Tibet. We investigated soil properties and nutrients by comparing free-grazing and grazing exclusion grasslands. The results showed that grazing exclusion had no impact on most soil properties and nutrients, and even caused a considerable decrease in soil TN and TP in the soil surface layer. Nevertheless, climate conditions during the growing season played an important role in controlling the soil quality status.