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Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology ›› 2017, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (12): 3891-3898.doi: 10.13287/j.1001-9332.201712.005

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Relation between species distribution of plant community and soil factors under grazing in alpine meadow

NIU Yu-jie1, YANG Si-wei1,2, WANG Gui-zhen1, LIU Li1, DU Guo-zhen3, HUA Li-min1*   

  1. 1College of Grassland Science, Gansu Agricultural University/Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecosystem/Sino-USA Centers for Grazing Land Ecosystem Sustainability, Lanzhou 730070, China
    2Bijie Institute of Animal and Veterinary Science, Bijie 551700, Guizhou, China
    3School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730030, China
  • Received:2017-05-31 Online:2017-12-18 Published:2017-12-18
  • Contact: * E-mail: hualm@gsau.edu.cn
  • Supported by:

    This work supported by the National Key Basic Research Program (2016YFC0501902) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31460635)

Abstract: The research selected the alpine meadow located in the northeastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to study the changes of vegetation community and soil properties under different grazing intensities, as well as the quantitative relation between the distribution patterns of plant species and the physical and chemical properties of soil. The results showed that the grazing caused the differentiation of the initial vegetation community with the dominant plants, Elymus nutans and Stipa grandis. In the plots with high and low grazing intensities, the dominant plants had changed to Kobresia humilis and Melissitus ruthenica, and E. nutans and Poa crymophila, respectively. With the increase of grazing intensity, the plant richness, importance value and biomass were significantly decreased. The sequence of plant species importance value in each plot against grazing intensity could be fitted by a logarithmic model. The number of required plant species was reduced while the importance value of the remaining plant species accounted for 50% of the importance value in the whole vegetation community. The available P, available K, soil compaction, soil water content, stable infiltration rate and large aggregate index were significantly changed with grazing intensity, however, the changes were different. The CCA ordination showed that the soil compaction was the key factor affecting the distribution pattern of the plant species under grazing. The variance decomposition indicated that the soil factors together explained 30.5% of the distribution of the plant species, in particular the soil physical properties alone explained 22.8% of the distribution of the plant species, which had the highest rate of contribution to the plant species distribution. The soil physical properties affected the distribution pattern of plant species on grazed alpine meadow.