Planting prickly pears as a sustainable alternative and restoration tool for rehabilitating degraded soils in dry steppe rangelands

This study assessed the impact of prickly pear plantations (PPPs) on soil characteristics and plant diversity in arid and semi-arid steppes of northeastern Algeria. The symbiosis of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) with Opuntia ficus-indica roots was seasonally estimated. In arid and semi-arid cli...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Arabian journal of geosciences 2022-02, Vol.15 (3), Article 287
Main Authors: Neffar, Souad, Beddiar, Arifa, Menasria, Taha, Chenchouni, Haroun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abundance
Arbuscular mycorrhizas
Arid climates
Arid environments
Aridity
Calcium carbonate
Carbon/nitrogen ratio
Climate
Diversity indices
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth science
Earth Sciences
Electrical conductivity
Electrical resistivity
Environmental restoration
Fungi
Herbivores
Infectivity
Linkage analysis
Nitrogen
Organic matter
Organic phosphorus
Original Paper
Parameters
Phosphorus
Physicochemical processes
Plant communities
Plant cover
Plant diversity
Plants
Prickly pears
Rangelands
Redundancy
Rehabilitation
Restoration
Roots
Semiarid climates
Soil characteristics
Soil degradation
Soil improvement
Soil properties
Soils
Species diversity
Species richness
Steppes
Symbiosis
Vegetation
Vegetation cover
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Summary:This study assessed the impact of prickly pear plantations (PPPs) on soil characteristics and plant diversity in arid and semi-arid steppes of northeastern Algeria. The symbiosis of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) with Opuntia ficus-indica roots was seasonally estimated. In arid and semi-arid climates, stations with PPPs were studied along with unplanted rangelands (NP). At each station, soil physicochemical parameters, namely pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total and active CaCO 3 , organic matter (SOM), total nitrogen (Nt), plant-available phosphorus (PAP), and C/N ratio, were determined. Vegetation was surveyed using vegetation cover and species abundance, which were used to compute species diversity indices, disturbance index, and plant functional traits. Mycorrhizal infectivity and intensity were measured for PPPs of both climates. Regardless of the climatic region, PPPs significantly improved vegetation cover ( P  
ISSN:1866-7511
1866-7538
DOI:10.1007/s12517-022-09579-1