Abstract:
Background The rapid development of highway construction in Tibet has produced a large number of highway slope engineering wounds, naturally the difficulty and investment for the restoration of slope vegetation is huge. Therefore, to explore a slope vegetation restoration measures with strong soil and water conservation for the long-term stability has important guiding significance for ecological protection and ecological restoration in highway construction in Tibet.
Methods The vegetation restoration experiment using ecological bags were conducted on the slope and flat land in the starting section of Lin La high-grade highways. The plants were Lolium perenne, Festuca elata, Poa pratensis, and Elymus sibiricus, all are of high resistance, domesticated and screened from plateaus. The experiment incorporated 2 irrigation levels(W1=60 mL/kg and W2=85 mL/kg)and 4 nitrogen levels(N0=0 g/kg, N1=0.027 8 g/kg, N2=0.055 6 g/kg, and N3=0.083 3 g/kg)according to the saturated water content (85%-90%) of sandy loam used in the experiment and nitrogen supply level (0.05-0.10 g/kg) of local crops, for a total 8 treatments. By analyzing the change of vegetation growth and biomass under different water and fertilizer conditions for ecological bags, the effect of vegetation restoration(especially on a slope) and the best combination of water and fertilizer were obtained.
Results The vegetation growth in ecological bags were affected by the coupling effect of water and nitrogen. When in full irrigation and low nitrogen, for example W2N1, the seedling emergence rate was 79%, plant height was 4.97-13.70 cm, coverage was 68.33%-81.67%, density was 13 600plants/m2 and aboveground biomass was 0.032 5 g/plant, slope vegetation reached the highest level. The seedling emergence rate, coverage, density of flat land vegetation were the highest with full irrigation, medium and high nitrogen (W2N2/W2N3). However, with low water and no nitrogen (W1N0), the seedling emergence rate, height and coverage of both slope and flat land vegetation were low in the later seedling emergence stage. In addition, the seedling emergence rate, height and coverage of slope vegetation were higher than those of the flat land with 2 levels of irrigation and low nitrogen (W1N1 and W2N1).
Conclusions The vegetation growth needs a certain water and nitrogen content, but there is limited distribution in an environment with excessive or insufficient water or nutrients, which is closely related to their resistances. Ecological bags lead to a strong regulation performance of water and fertilizer and play a protective role on the slope. Under a certain water and nitrogen coupling condition, the growth of the vegetation on the slope is better than that of the flat land. Moreover, the optimal condition of water and fertilizer in slope vegetation restoration of ecological bags is that:W2N1; that in the flat land is:W2N2/W2N3. It can be concluded that this technology is suitable for the promotion and utilization of highway slope restoration in the tableland area.