Abstract:
To reveal the impacts of the soil environmental factors and vegetation community structure on carbon and nitrogen storage pattern of the estuarine wetland at the initial stage of ecological restoration period,this paper studied the carbon and nitrogen storage patterns of the soil-vegetation system in the restoration zone of Liaohe River Delta and clarified the impact contribution rate of the soil environmental factors such as salinity, moisture content, elevation and plant community structures on them based on the analysis of variance decomposition. Results showed that, the average soil carbon and nitrogen storage were 41.93 t/ha, 8.65 t/ha for spring and 44.72 t/ha, 8.80 t/ha for winter respectively. The average plant carbon and nitrogen storage were 8.97 kg/ha, 0.61 kg/ha for spring and 180.48 kg/ha, 16.27 kg/ha for winter respectively. The plant carbon and nitrogen storage had significant logarithmic relationships with plant height and coverage of community, and had significant negative correlations with the turnover rate of soil nitrogen and the microbial biomass C(N). Variance decompose analysis showed that the elevation and moisture content could cumulatively explain 45.6% of the changes in carbon and nitrogen storage patterns at plant seedling stage, and explain 54.5% at the mature stage. The results of this study strongly support that measures of microtopography restoration and water compensation play an important role in improving the blue carbon sequestration of degraded estuarine wetlands.