Phosphorus cycling in grasslands and forests of differing diversity and land use

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Yvonne Oelmann
• Subject Area: Soil Sciences
• Term: from 2008 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 60966032

Increasingly efficient nutrient exploitation with increasing plant diversity results in lower nutrient concentrations in soil solution. This has been shown for N but not for other important nutrients such as P. In managed ecosystems, diversity is closely linked to land-use intensity and history. To understand the controls of nutrient concentrations in soil the land-use and biodiversity effects must be disentangled. Therefore, we propose to study the effect of land use and biodiversity on P cycling in grassland and forest systems of the three biodiversity exploratories. Our objective is to disentangle the effect of land use and plant diversity on 1) P in soil (total, inorganic, and organic), 2) P release in soil (dissolution of P minerals and mineralization of organic matter), and 3) P in plants in all intensively studied subplots of each exploratory (grasslands and forests). Furthermore, we will assess the influence of land-use practices on P in soil by using novel isotope techniques, i.e. the determination of d18O in phosphates. We will determine P pools in soil and plant biomass, P release by dissolution and mineralization, and the isotopic signature (d18O) in phosphate extracted from soil.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1374: Biodiversity Exploratories