2.1 Site description
The study location was situated in Tiaozini reclamation area in Dongtai
prefecture (32°49.9′ ~ 32°50.3′N, 120°56.6′
~ 120°57.4′E), north Jiangsu Province, China (Fig. 1).
This site was located in marine-terrestrial interlaced area and was
enclosed and reclaimed from coastal tidal mudflats in 2013. The distance
from this site to the coastline of China Yellow Sea was about 1.6 km
(Liu et al., 2019). The experimental site has nearly flat topography
with an average elevation of 1.0 m above-sea-level. This site was in
subtropical zone and strongly affected by the oceanic monsoon throughout
the year. Cold, dry season is from November to March and the hot, wet
season is during June and September. The mean annual rainfall is 1048.5
mm and an average of 734.3 mm rainfall occurred from May to September
during the period of 2000-2015. Annual air temperature and daily
sunshine duration were averagely 15.0 ℃ and 5.8 h, respectively.
Developed from Yangtze alluvial sediments and marine sediments, the
predominant soil is silt loam, classified as a loamy, mixed Typic
Halaquepts group of Aquepts in Inceptisols based on soil taxonomy (Soil
Survey Staff, 2014). Shallow saline water table (annual average
electrical conductivity of 7.6 dS/m and water table of 1.10 m) results
in large areas of salt-affected land and poor soil productivity for
cropland. The experimental site is a representative of large areas of
salt-affected farmlands in coastal alluvial plain of China.
Figure 1