Figure 1.
Mean monthly air temperature and rainfall distribution for typical steppe and desert steppe in 2010.
Variation of annual average temperature and annual average precipitation from 1990–2010 in typical steppe and desert steppe.
Table 1.
Mean values of soil characteristics of upper 30 cm.
Figure 2.
Mean soil water content (%, w/w) in two steppes for four treatments.
The error bars indicate the standard error. Means sharing the same letters were not significantly different (p<0.05). UG, ungrazed; LG, lightly grazed; MG, moderately grazed; HG, heavily grazed.
Table 2.
Partial ANOVA table showing degrees of freedom (DF) and P-values from GLM analysis (at α = 0.05) of TN, SOC, MBC and C∶N ratio in the study sites across grazing intensity (GI) and depths (D).
Table 3.
Concentration and mass of soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) for soils from ungrazed (UG), lightly grazed (LG), moderately grazed (MG), and heavily grazed (HG) sites sampled in 2010 in the Desert and Typical steppe, Inner Mongolia.
Table 4.
Mean (SE) C∶N ratios (incorporating all depths) and mean (SE) MBC∶SOC ratios (incorporating 0–5 cm and 5–10 cm depths) with different grazing pressure for two sites.
Table 5.
Comparison of concentration of SOC in desert steppe between 2004 and 2010.
Figure 3.
Mean MBC concentration in two types of grassland, inclusive of two soil depths and four stocking rates.
The error bars indicate the standard error. Means sharing the same letters were not significantly different (p<0.05). UG, ungrazed; LG, lightly grazed; MG, moderately grazed; HG, heavily grazed.
Table 6.
Correlation between SOC, TN, MBC, and C/N for study sites (incorporating all depths and all stocking rates, n = 240 in desert steppe, n = 160 in typical steppe).