Improvement effects of coconut chaff and peat soil application in rodent-damaged bald patch land in alpine meadow

Rodent-damaged bald patches in alpine meadow represent the initial stage of black soil beach degraded grassland. To explore the effect of the external application of coconut chaff and peat soil on the improvement of bald patch land, representative bald patch land in Maqu County, eastern Qinghai–Tibet Plateau was selected in this study. Bald patch land without these measures was used as the control (CK). Three measures of shallow plowing (SP), shallow plowing (SP) + coconut chaff (CF), shallow plowing (SP) + coconut chaff (CF) + peat (PS) were used to investigate the plant community characteristics and soil physical and chemical properties of bald patch land under different measures over three years. The influence of environmental factors on plant community characteristics was examined using redundancy analysis, which showed that after three years of recovery under different restoration measures, the bald patch area was successfully restored. 3) Partial redundancy analysis showed that soil organic matter (OM), soil capillary water holding capacity (Cc), and total porosity (Tp) had a significant net effect on variance interpretation of plant community characteristics (P < 0.05). In summary, the three control measures can improve the vegetation growth and soil quality in the bald patches. The most optimal control measure was the treatment that used shallow plowing with coconut fiber.