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Riparian soils, together with vegetation, play a crucial role in supporting biodiversity and driving biogeochemical processes within river ecosystems. Conservation of riparian soils and artificial planting are essential for river ecosystem recovery following land degradation. Researchers focus on examining soil nutrients, microbial biomass, and organic acid metabolism in the interactions between plants and soil along riverbanks. However, the seasonal responses of riparian soils to artificial plantations have been infrequently reported in the existing literature. This study investigates the influence of seasonal variations on soil conditions and the growth of artificially planted species in the riparian zones of the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir (TGDR) in China. The species sampled include Cynodon dactylon, Hemarthria altissima, and Salix matsudana. These species provide valuable insight into soil properties along riparian zones, assessing interactions across different seasons: T1 (spring), T2 (summer), and T3 (autumn). The results demonstrated significant seasonal changes in soil organic matter, ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, and other indicators between T1 and T3. Apart from invertase activity in H. altissima soil, enzyme activity peaked during T1. Dominant soil bacteria were examined using high-throughput 16S rDNA sequencing, revealing that the available bacteria belong to 62 phyla and 211 classes. Among the most abundant were Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria, averaging over 60 % across all soil samples. Principal component analyses accounted for 62.81 % (T1), 50.57 % (T2), and 54.08 % (T3) of the variation observed in the study, indicating that soil properties were predominantly influenced by the different seasonal phases, assuming all other factors remained constant. Pearson correlation analysis (p < 0.05) identified strong positive correlations between physical properties and all three plant species during T1 (r ≤ 0.94), as well as significant negative correlations with bacterial communities in T2 and T3 (r ≤ −1.00). These findings suggest that the selected plant species are well-suited to cultivation in the riparian zone of the TGDR. This study enhances our understanding of seasonal dynamics in riparian environments, offering practical insights into their management.

Abstract Dams worldwide have significantly altered the composition of riparian forests. However, research on the functional traits of dominant herbs experiencing flooding stress due to dam impoundment remains limited. Given the high plasticity of leaf traits and their susceptibility to environmental influences, this study focuses on riparian herbs along the Three Gorges Hydro‐Fluctuation Zone (TGHFZ). Specifically, it investigates how six leaf physiological traits of leading herbs—carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and their stoichiometric ratios—adapt to periodic flooding in the TGHFZ using cluster analysis, one‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA), multiple comparisons, Pearson correlation analysis, and principal component analysis (PCA). We categorized 25 dominant herb species into three plant functional types (PFTs), noting that species from the same family tended to fall into the same PFT. Notably, leaf carbon content (LCC) exhibited no significant differences across various PFTs or altitudes. Within riparian forests, different PFTs employ distinct adaptation strategies: PFT‐I herbs invest in structural components to enhance stress resistance; PFT‐II, mostly comprising gramineous plants, responds to prolonged flooding by rapid growth above the water; and PFT‐III, encompassing nearly all Compositae and annual plants, responds to prolonged flooding with vigorous rhizome growth and seed production. Soil water content (SWC) emerges as the primary environmental factor influencing dominant herb growth in the TGHFZ. By studying the response of leaf physiological traits in dominant plants to artificial flooding, we intend to reveal the survival mechanisms of plants under adverse conditions and lay the foundation for vegetation restoration in the TGHFZ.

Riparian topographical features can drive a suite of ecological indicators (EIs) that shape the river ecosystem. The mechanisms that EIs reflect provide several ecosystem services. We know little about the responses of EIs (indicators of plant cover, regeneration, exotics, habitat, erosion, and stressors) to the changing stream-channel width, riparian width, and elevation of the lengthy drawdown zones (upstream, midstream, and downstream) of long rivers. We have discovered that changing topographical characteristics affect riparian buffer areas differently by using a rapid field-based method with 297 transects in inundated regions along the Yangtze River and other 36 linked tributaries in China. Changing stream-channel widths was most effective on downstream EIs and the least effective at midstream. The exotic parameters were the most affected (with a range of −0.36 < r

Ecotourism activities in riparian zones have heightened concern about protecting riparian health indicators (RHIs). Ecotourism in riparian zones is growing significantly, but its management requires trade-offs between recreational activities and ecological functions. This paper aims to show how people's recreational activities affect RHIs along mega-reservoirs and around dams. Investigators collected data from 301 transects inside the riparian zones of the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir (TGDR) in China, taking rural, rural–urban transitional, and urban land-use patterns into account. The Kruskal-Wallis tests (p

Environmental illiteracy threatens the functioning mechanisms of ecological networks worldwide, yet many people remain dubious about their existence. The knowledge deficit model suggests that giving the public (local people and government personnel) additional information would alleviate distrust. There is limited evidence indicating that environmental literacy metrics (ELMs) influence ecological network indicators (ENIs) such as plant cover, habitat, exotics, regeneration, erosion, and stressors throughout the drawdown zone (upstream, midstream, and downstream) within dams and reservoirs, despite widespread implementation to enhance riparian zone conservation. This study tackles this knowledge gap by using multivariate statistical methods to assess ENIs on the covered area of 58,000 km2 in 327 transects through a field-based approach inside China's Three Gorges Reservoir area (TGRA) in 2019. The bar graph results showed the largest lack of information about ELMs (e.g., knowledge, attitude, and behavior) from the general populace, and it had the biggest effect on the plant cover in the midstream and the least impact on regeneration in the upstream. The ELMs of local people influenced the ENIs most within the downstream, with coefficients of Pearson correlation in the range of −0.67

Quantitative classification and ordination are instrumental in improving our understanding of plant community patterns and facilitating effective conservation efforts in national mountain ecosystems worldwide. However, there has been a lack of relevant research focused on arid and semi-arid mountain ecosystems. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the Ningxia Helan Mountain National Nature Reserve (located in Northwest China). We conducted a comprehensive study on the patterns of plant communities and their association with environmental factors across a broad elevation range from 1200 m a.s.l. to 2600 m a.s.l. Our findings revealed the presence of 121 angiosperm species across 41 families, with vegetation classified into six distinct groups through two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN) along the elevational gradient. Notably, the communities of Ulmus, Prunus, and Stipa in the middle elevation range exhibited the highest Shannon–Wiener (SW) and Simpson (SN) diversity indices, and these indices followed a single-peak pattern with increasing elevation. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) further revealed six distinct yet interrelated plant communities, revealing elevation (ELE) and the biological aridity index (BK) as the most influential environmental factors influencing plant communities' distribution. This understanding is critically important for biodiversity conservation and the management of ecosystems in arid and semi-arid mountain ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wood chips, together with crop straw and manure, were demonstrated as feasible amendments for improving overall soil health and enhancing plant growth in severely desertified areas in Northern China in our previous studies. However, the effects of their mixtures are unclear. In this study, we evaluated the effect of three different amendment materials, when used alone and in combination, on physical, chemical, and biological properties of desertified soil and on the associated growth of alfalfa in Ningxia, Northern China. Four replicate microcosms were set up containing sandy soil mixed with 3% (w/w) of each of the following treatments: cow manure (CM), corn straw (CS), and poplar branches (PB) and their mixtures CS-PB, CM-PB, CM-CS, and CM-CS-PB. Measurements were conducted 7 and 15 months after the start of the experiment. Results showed, as a whole, treatment CS-PB improved soil physical properties more than other amendments during the whole experimental period, compared with control. However, the best establishment of alfalfa in the first year and best growth in the second year occurred in the CM-CS-PB treatment. Moreover, available N and urease were the most important driving factors affecting alfalfa growth during the whole experimental period, as shown by redundancy analysis. However, interestingly, the CM-CS-PB also functioned better in maintaining N supply and accelerating microbial activity than the other amendments. Therefore, we concluded that wood chips have a unique advantage in improving overall soil health and alfalfa growth when combined with straw and manure as new amendments. Additional keywords: corn straw, cow manure, desertified soil, organic amendments, poplar branches. Received 15 May 2019, accepted 10 March 2020, published online 20 April 2020, Introduction A critical challenge facing the world is determining how to feed the exponentially increasing human population in the coming decades. Estimates are that agriculture will have to increase production [...]

With the increasing demand of high-power and pulsed power electronic devices, environmental-friendly potassium sodium niobate ((Na 0. 5 K 0. 5 )NbO3, KNN) ceramic-based capacitors have attracted much attention in recent years owning to the boosted energy storage density ( W rec ). Nevertheless, the dielectric loss also increases as the external electric field increases, which will generate much dissipated energy and raise the temperature of ceramic capacitors. Thus, an effective strategy is proposed to enhance the energy storage efficiency (η) via tailoring relaxor behavior and bad gap energy in the ferroelectric 0.9(Na 0. 5 K 0. 5 )-NbO3–0.1Bi(Zn 2 / 3 (Nb x Ta 1 − x ) 1 / 3 )O3 ceramics. On the one hand, the more diverse ions in the B-sites owing to introducing the Ta could further disturb the long-range ferroelectric polar order to form the short–range polar nanoregions (PNRs), resulting in the high η. On the other hand, the introduction of Ta ions could boost the intrinsic band energy gap and thus improve the E b . As a result, high W rec of 3.29 J/cm3 and ultrahigh η of 90.1% at the high external electric field of 310 kV/cm are achieved in x = 0.5 sample. These results reveal that the KNN-based ceramics are promising lead-free candidate for high-power electronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]