The progressive restoration of degraded vegetation in semiarid and arid desertified areas undoubtedly formed different habitat types. The most plants regulate their growth by fixing carbon with their energy deriving from photosynthesis, carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) play the crucial role in regulating plant growth, community structure and function in the vegetation restoration progress. However, it is still unclear how habitat types affect the dynamic changes of allocation in C and N storage of vegetation-soil system in sandy grasslands. Here, we investigated plant community characteristics and soil properties across three successional stages of habitat types: semi-fixed dunes (SFD), fixed dunes (FD) and grasslands (G) in 2011, 2013 and 2015. We also examined the C and N concentrations of vegetation-soil system, and estimated their C and N storage. The C and N storage of vegetation system, soil and vegetation-soil system remarkably increased from SFD to G. The litter C and N storage in SFD, N storage of vegetation system in SFD and N storage of soil and vegetation-soil system in FD increased from 2011 to 2015, while aboveground plant C and N storage of FD were higher in 2011 than in 2013 and 2015. Most of C and N were sequestered in soil in the vegetation restoration progress. These results suggest that the dynamic changes of allocation in C and N storage in vegetation-soil systems varied with habitat types. Our study highlights that SFD has higher N sequestration rate in vegetation, while FD has the considerably N sequestration rate in the soil.

The two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine the effects of habitat types, sampling years, and their interaction on aboveground biomass, litter mass, root biomass, soil bulk density, C and N concentrations, and storage in aboveground plant, litter, root, and soil at each depth, vegetation system, and vegetation–soil system. Least significant differences (LSD) test was used to compare the different habitat types or sampling years if the ANOVA was significant (p < .05).