Trees support functional soils in a dryland agricultural area

Abstract

Trees provide multiple ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, hydrological regulation and habitat for arboreal animals. However, they are often removed to support agricultural enterprises. Despite the importance of tree remnants, we know relatively little about how soils differ across sites of varying condition. Here, we describe a study where we examined the relative effects of trees, compared with unvegetated interspaces, on soil functions in remnant patches at sites in good and poor condition in two eucalypt communities in an irrigation area in eastern Australia. We found that, in general, carbon and nutrient cycling were relatively greater beneath trees, and in surface soils, but there were no clear trends in relation to site condition. The values of most soil attributes (e.g., soluble and exchangeable cations, nitrogen, phosphorus) were greater beneath trees, indicating strong fertile island effects in both communities. Overall, our study confirms the importance of trees in remnant patches in agricultural landscapes, particularly those in sites of poor condition. It also suggests that soil processes may still be relatively intact, even in sites in poor condition. Our study reinforces the need to protect trees in remnant woodland reserves to maintain critical ecosystem functions related to nutrient retention. These remnants are important for achieving sustainable management of agricultural systems.

Keywords

Condition / Eucalyptus / Fertile islands / Soil function / Trees / Woodlands

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jingyi Ding: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Formal analysis. David J. Eldridge: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We thank Lilian Parker, Rob Kelly, Louise Harrison and Karen McCann, formerly of Murrumbidgee Irrigation, for supporting this work and encouraging us to publish the results. John Naimo and James Val assisted with field work. We are grateful to the contributing landholders for allowing us access to their properties. Andres Sutton produced Fig. 1(a). Jingyi Ding is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China and David Eldridge by the Hermon Slade Foundation.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2024.08.001.

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