Restoring degraded alpine wetlands is critical for reviving their role as vital carbon sinks. These ecosystems, historically used as pasturelands, have suffered significant functional decline. Effective restoration requires a critical insight into how grazing management governs soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics. However, the specific environmental and vegetation factors that govern SOC accumulation under different grazing regimes remain unclear, hindering the development of effective, mechanism-based restoration strategies. This study examined how grazing intensity influences SOC in the Zoige wetlands of the eastern Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, China, using vegetation surveys and soil sampling under four grazing intensities. Results demonstrated that the significant difference in SOC between natural and grazed wetlands was accompanied by consistent, grazing-induced changes in vegetation and soil properties along a gradient of intensity. Linear mixed models and hierarchical partitioning revealed that plant height, plant density, soil water content (SWC), total nitrogen (TN), and C:N ratio were significantly correlated with SOC. Plant height was the dominant vegetation factor, explaining 77.21% of SOC variation, while SWC was the key soil property, accounting for 55.74%. Structural equation modeling indicated that grazing influences SOC through two independent pathways: one mediated by SWC (and subsequently TN and C:N ratio), and another directly through plant height. These parallel pathways suggest that SOC is governed by independent rather than interactive effects of soil conditions and vegetation structure. We tentatively propose a “soil–vegetation parallel management” approach for restoration, focusing on separable factors (e.g., soil moisture, plant height), which may help improve carbon sequestration or mitigate carbon loss in grazing‑impacted alpine wetlands.
Li et al. (Fri,) studied this question.