干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Targeting at the artificial forests of Caragana korshinskii Kom. at the agro-pasture zigzag zone of Inner Mongolia, China, we applied four stump treatments before thawing in the spring of early March, 2016, including stumping at 0, 10 or 20 cm, and no stumping. In August the same year, the roots and soil moistures were hierarchically sampled using a quarter circle method. Then the spatial distributions of root morphology indices and soil water content at different root diameter levels of C. korshinskii were studied. It was found (1) the roots at three diameter levels after different treatments tended to be distributed at shallow layers, and mainly at the 0-40 cm layer, but rarely at the 180-200 cm layer. The root morphological indices shared basically consistent space distributive laws as the soil water contents, as both decreased with the increase of soil depth or horizontal distance from the trunk. (2) After different stumping treatments, the root distributions were positively correlated with the soil water contents, and the correlation coefficients of total root length, root volume, and specific root length with soil water contents were 0.725, 0.740 and 0.570, respectively. This study may theoretically underlie the planting management and vegetation recovery of artificial C. korshinskii forests in arid areas.