Chin J Plant Ecol ›› 2024, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (12): 1561-1575.DOI: 10.17521/cjpe.2023.0349  cstr: 32100.14.cjpe.2023.0349

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Response of soil seed banks to global change and human activity: current knowledge and advances

DU Zhong-Yu, WANG Jia, CHEN Guang-Cai*()()   

  1. Research Institute of Subtropical Forestry, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Hangzhou 311400, China
  • Received:2023-11-23 Accepted:2024-05-06 Online:2024-12-20 Published:2024-12-20
  • Contact: CHEN Guang-Cai
  • Supported by:
    National Key R&D Program of China(2020YFC1807704)

Abstract:

Soil seed banks (SSBs) represent potential resource reserves for future species diversity in the terrestrial ecosystem, and play an important role in the storage of species and genetic diversity. Global changes and human activities have important impacts on SSBs, while current studies mainly focus on the response of SSBs to small scales (region) or single influencing factor. Comprehensive understanding on the responses of SSBs to global changes and human activities was limited by small scale (region) or lack of the multi-factor coupling. In this review, a total of 7 606 related articles were retrieved from databases of CNKI and Web of Science, ranging from 1980 to 9th February 2022, and bibliometrics were conducted to summarize the study progress and to guide the future study on the SSBs. The research outcomes of SSBs suggest that global changes (temperature, precipitation change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition) and human activities (soil use change, fenced, grazing and ecology restoration) have direct or indirect effects on the composition and size (density) of SSBs. The roles of SSBs in restoring degraded ecosystems remain unresolved. Four major research directions in SSBs still need to be paid more attention: (1) Standardize the sampling methods of SSBs, including sampling time, sampling size, and sampling depth, and establish a complete research methods systems; (2) Establish long-term field positioning observation and experimental station to study the change characteristics of SSBs on time and space scales; (3) Research on multi-factor interaction effects under global changes and human activities; (4) Based on the observation of long-term data, developing the models to predict and quantify the future restoration potential of SSBs to plant communities and ecosystems in the context of multiple factors.

Key words: soil seed bank, global changes, human activity, ecology restoration