SOILS, SEC 1 • SOIL ORGANIC MATTER DYNAMICS AND NUTRIENT CYCLING • RESEARCH ARTICLE Response of phosphorus fractions to land-use change followed by long-term fertilization in a sub-alpine humid soil of Qinghai–Tibet plateau Xiaolei Sun 1,2,3 & Meng Li 2,3,4 & Guoxi Wang 1,2 & Marios Drosos 5 & Fulai Liu 2,3 & Zhengyi Hu 1,2 Received: 28 June 2018 /Accepted: 3 September 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Purpose Identification of phosphorus (P) species is essential to understand the transformation and availability of P in soil. However, P species as affected by land use change along with fertilization has received little attention in a sub-alpine humid soil of Tibet plateau. Materials and methods In this study, we investigated the changes in P species using Hedley sequential fractionation and liquid- state 31 P-NMR spectroscopy in soils under meadow (M) and under cropland with (CF) or without (CNF) long-term fertilization for 26 years in a sub-alpine cold-humid region in Qinghai–Tibet plateau. Results and discussion Land-use change and long-term fertilization affected the status and fractions of P. A strong mineralization of organic P (OP) was induced by losing protection of soil organic matter (SOM) and Fe and Al oxides during land-use change and resulted in an increase of orthophosphate (from 56.49 mg kg -1 in M soils to 130.07 mg kg -1 in CNF soils) and great decreases of orthophosphate diesters (diester-P, from 23.35 mg kg -1 in M soils to 10.68 mg kg -1 in CNF soils) and monoesters (from 336.04 mg kg -1 in M soils to 73.26 mg kg -1 in CNF soils). Long-term fertilization boosted P supply but failed to reclaim soil diester-P (from 10.68 mg kg -1 in CNF soils to 7.79 mg kg -1 in CF soils). This may be due to the fragile protection from the combination of SOM with diester-P when long-term fertilization had only improved SOM in a slight extent. Conclusions These results suggest that SOM plays an important role in the soil P cycling and prevents OP mineralization and losses from soil. It is recommended that optimization of soil nutrient management integrated with SOM was required to improve the P use efficiency for the development of sustainable agriculture. Keywords Compost . Hedley sequential fractionation . Liquid-state 31 P-NMR . Meadow soil . Organic phosphates Responsible editor: Yongfu Li Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-018-2132-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Meng Li limeng12b@mails.ucas.ac.cn * Zhengyi Hu zhyhu@ucas.ac.cn 1 College of Resources and Environment, Sino-Danish College, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China 2 Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research, Beijing 100190, China 3 Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Crop Science Section, University of Copenhagen, Højbakkegaard Allé 13, DK-2630 Taastrup, Denmark 4 State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, China 5 Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca sulla Risonanza Magnetica Nucleare per l’Ambiente, l’Agroalimentare ed i Nuovi Materiali (CERMANU), Università di Napoli BFederico II^, via Università 100, 80055 Portici, Italy Journal of Soils and Sediments https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-018-2132-y