Olivia
Description
This dataset was collected to test the hypothesis that plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) disturbance modifies soil physicochemical conditions, which in turn drives divergent biomass responses among plant functional groups and restructures above- and belowground biomass allocation patterns in alpine meadows on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. The study was conducted in an alpine meadow on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau across a gradient of pika disturbance intensity (control, moderate, and high disturbance). In each sampling plot, we measured soil physicochemical properties including soil water content, pH, soil compaction, total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN), ammonium nitrogen (NH₄⁺-N), and nitrate nitrogen (NO₃⁻-N) across multiple soil depths. Plant community attributes included species richness, aboveground biomass of four plant functional groups (grasses, sedges, legumes, and forbs), total aboveground biomass, and belowground biomass partitioned by soil layer, with a focus on surface soil where roots are densely distributed. The data reveal that increasing pika disturbance intensity significantly reduced soil water content, TC, TN, and NH₄⁺-N, while increasing soil pH and NO₃⁻-N. Pika disturbance directly decreased the aboveground biomass of grasses, sedges, and legumes, and indirectly suppressed sedge growth by reducing soil compaction; these combined effects lowered total aboveground biomass. Forb biomass exhibited a unimodal response, peaking at moderate disturbance, and the proportion of toxic forbs increased with disturbance. Species richness declined along the disturbance gradient. Belowground biomass was reduced both directly by pika disturbance and indirectly through elevated soil pH, with the decline concentrated in the surface soil layer. These findings indicate that pika disturbance triggers a cascade of negative feedbacks—deteriorating soil properties, increasing toxic forbs, and depleting surface root biomass—that ultimately drive alpine meadow degradation. The dataset can be used to identify disturbance intensity thresholds at which ecosystem properties shift significantly, to model direct and indirect pathways linking small-mammal disturbance to plant community and soil responses via structural equation modeling or similar approaches, and to inform scientific management and ecological restoration strategies for degraded alpine meadows. All variables are documented in an accompanying metadata file with units and sampling protocols.
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Institutions
- Henan UniversityHenan, Kaifeng