ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Soil Processes
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1601724
Effect of off-road vehicle activity on vegetation community and soil properties in the Otindag Sandy Land, China
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Public Administration, Hebei University of Economics and Business, Shijiazhuang, China
- 2Hebei Collaborative Innovation Center for Urban-rural Integrated Development, Hebei University of Economics and Business, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China
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Off-road vehicle (ORV) activity has emerged as a growing ecological disturbance in arid and semiarid grasslands, yet its combined impact with topographic factors such as slope remains poorly understood. A 4-year field compaction test was conducted in Otindag Sandy Land to explore changes in the vegetation community and soil properties under different degrees of off-road vehicle compaction and different slope conditions and investigate the effect of ORV activity on grassland vegetation and soil. The results showed that ORV activity caused a marked reduction (P < 0.05) in plant community species diversity, and the Shannon – Wiener (SWI), Margalef 's (MI), Simpson dominance (SDI), and Pielou evenness (PEI) indices decreased by 58.62–81.31%, 24.44–48.78%, 52.22–77.78% and 50.00–75.68%, respectively, in ORV treatments compared to that in the control treatments. Additionally, ORV activity caused a significant increase in soil bulk density and a notable decrease in soil organic matter, water and clay contents, available phosphorus and potassium, and soil enzyme activity. Redundancy analysis showed that the species diversity of the plant community was closely related to soil factors. MI, SWI, SDI, and PEI were positively correlated with pH, available phosphorus and potassium, alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen, soil organic matter, and soil water, silt, and clay contents and negatively correlated with bulk density and sand content. The slope and ORV activity interacted significantly with the Simpson dominance index, soil particle composition, pH, total nitrogen, alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen, soil sucrase activity, and solid-urease activity. The impact of ORV activity on the vegetation community and soil properties became more severe with an increase in the slope. Assessing the impact of ORV activity on soil and vegetation can provide a scientific basis for the sustainable development and management of outdoor cross-country activities.
Keywords: Off-road vehicle, soil properties, sandy land, Vegetation community, Redundancy analysis
Received: 31 Mar 2025; Accepted: 20 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Long, Zhang, Cao, Liang, Gao and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Wei Zhang, School of Public Administration, Hebei University of Economics and Business, Shijiazhuang, China
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