Effects of plant species on soil properties in the ecosystem restoration-A case study in the dry valley of the Upper Minjiang River
Biodiversity pattern impacts effects on the soil properties on different scales, and contrarily soil characteristics influence biodiversity. Changes in the abundance of species-especially those that influence water and nutrient dynamics, trophic interactions-affect the structure and functioning of ecosystems. It is very important to reveal their close relationships for understanding the process of ecosystems. As an ecological sensitive region in Yangtze River, the shrub community biogeochemistry of arid valley in Upper Minjiang River caused much attention. We investigated the detailed plant biodiversity, topography and different soil properties along six typical shrub line-transects at three sites in the valley. To discern the complex relationships of plant and soil, different multivariate statistical analysis techniques were used at different spatial scales. The results showed different soil properties were significantly relative to community features at different scales and principle component analysis screened that available nitrogen (AN) was a sensitive factor for the shrub communities. Multivariate linear regression revealed that shrub coverage, height and herb species had quantitative linear relationships with AN content. Further study of biodiversity and soil properties showed that soil organic matter (OM), total nitrogen (TN) and AN had high relationship with the deduced plant -diversity index. To elucidate the effects of species change on the soil properties, we compared the similarity index and the nutrient variation index we brought out using two methods. The results showed species change could explain variation of soil properties and they had certain cause-effect relation along the slope catena and in the arid dry valley. Thus, it is possible to identify potential mechanism of soils response to variation in plant diversity, with implications for resource management.
arid dry valley soil property plant diversity Minjiang River
S.L. Liu B.J. Fu K.M. Ma G. H. Liu W. B. Guan Y. X. Kang
School of Environment, State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, Beijing Normal Universi Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chines Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China Northwest Sci-Tech University of Agriculture and Forestry, Yangling Shaanxi, 712100, China
国际会议
上海
英文
4382-4387
2008-05-16（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）