Warm‐season Grazing Benefits Species Diversity Conservation and Topsoil Nutrient Sequestration in Alpine Meadow

Seasonal grazing is one way of the moderate grazing regimes, but little information is available on compared study of seasonal grazing in alpine meadow. We studied the aboveground and belowground properties among warm-seasonal grazing meadows and cold-seasonal grazing meadows on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Results showed that the warm-seasonal grazing increased forb functional group proportion, plant density and evenness index but decreased root biomass, plant height and graminoid functional group proportions. Grazing seasons affected variation in soil bulk density, soil water content, pH and soil nutrient content, and the variations caused the various of soil carbon and nitrogen density. The highest values of soil carbon and nitrogen contents and densities in the warm-season grazing meadow occurred at the top 10-cm soil, while the highest values in the cold-season grazing meadow occurred at the depth of 30- to 50-cm soil. Our results indicated that the warm-season grazing is suitable for the species diversity conservation and the nutrient sequestration at the topsoil. However, the cold-season grazing is suitable for the nutrient sequestration at the deep soil. This study implied that the warm-season and cold-season grazing might be exchanged regularly to practice continuous carbon and nitrogen sequestration. Periodic cold-season and warm-season grazing would be the suitable grazing regime to keep alpine meadow sustainability. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.