Carbon and nitrogen contents and greenhouse gas fluxes of the Eurasian steppe soils with different land-use histories located in the Arkaim museum reserve of South Ural, Russia

Figures & data

Figure 1. Location of the Arkaim in Russia (a), locations of archeological monument and sampling sites in the Arkaim (b) and view of sampling sites (c). Sampling sites were a natural forest site (NF) and two fallow grassland sites that had different land-use histories until 1991 and were fallow afterward: continuous cropland (CL): and continuous pasture (PST).Values on contour lines (b) are height above sea level (in meters). The five forest bands in (b) are the remains of windbreakers for cropland. Original map of (a) from the World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency 2011).

Figure 2. Microbial biomass carbon (C) (closed bars) and nitrogen (N) (opened bars) in soils with different land-use histories, located in the Arkaim. Error bars show standard deviations. Different lower-case letters are used for statistical differences in biomass C, and different capital letters are for biomass N [Tukey's honestly significant difference (HSD) tests, p < 0.05, n = 3].

Table 1. Chemical and physical properties of soils with different land-use histories, located in the Arkaim

Land-use history		Site	Soil horizon	pH (H2O)	EC (mS m^−1)	Total C	Total N	C/N ratio	SOC	SN
Current†	Past‡					(g kg^−1dry soil)			(mg kg^−1dry soil)
Fallow grassland	Cropland	CL	A	7.2	15.1	31 d	2.7 c	12	139 c	32 c
	Pasture	PST	A	6.7	9.4	37 b	3.1 b	12	167 c	33 c
Natural forest	Natural forest	NF	O	5.9	17.7	105 a	7.3 a	14	884 a	196 a
			A	5.2	6.4	33 c	2.5 c	13	423 b	73 b
Values with different letters among each column differ significantly by the Tukey honestly significant difference (HSD) tests (p < 0.05, n = 3).
†Current means land-use history since 1991.
‡Past means land-use history until 1991.
Abbreviations: EC, electrical conductivity; C, carbon; N, nitrogen; SOC, soil soluble organic carbon; SN, soluble nitrogen; CL, continuous cropland; PST, continuous pasture; NF, natural forest.

Figure 3. Carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) fluxes in soils with different land-use histories, located in the Arkaim. Error bars are standard deviations. Different letters are used for statistical differences in gas fluxes among sites [Tukey's honestly significant difference (HSD) tests, p < 0.05, n = 3].

Central Intelligence Agency 2011: The World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/graphics/ref_maps/pdf/asia.pdf (June, 2011)

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