Plant Soil DOI 10.1007/s11104-011-0782-2

Effect of slight vegetation degradation on soil properties in Brachypodium pinnatum grasslands

Klára Virágh & Tibor Tóth & Imelda Somodi

Abstract The interrelationship of soil and vegetation degradation is an emerging issue, where most studies have addressed severe degradation so far. We aimed at revealing changes in soil accompanying slight vegetation degradation in a case study involving xeromesophilous
grasslands from Hungary. Slight degradation is of special interest here because the target community (Euphorbio pannonicae—Brachypodietum pinnati association) has great nature conservation value. Vegetation status was related to chemical and structural soil properties by principal component analysis and redundancy analysis. Vegetation conditions were assessed by
species abundances and by fine-scale spatial structure, which is proposed here for soil-vegetation studies. Slight vegetation degradation clearly manifested itself in soil properties. Differences in vegetation status when assessed by species abundances were mirrored in chemical soil properties. When structural vegetation descriptors were used, a soil structure property (bulk
density) was responsible for the segregation according to naturalness. Vegetation-soil relationships were more consistent over biogeographic regions, when vegetation structural descriptors were used. Differences in chemical soil properties reflected species abundance
pattern, as was found in most non-grazing related degradation studies. However, changes to soil structure also accompanied slight degradation, and their importance was revealed when vegetation structure was taken into account.

Keywords Base-rock influence . Geographic variation . Naturalness . Soil structure .Vegetation
structure