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cje ›› 2011, Vol. 30 ›› Issue (07): 1449-1453.

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Relations between plant species richness and community productivity of typical grasslands in Qinghai Lake basin.

WU Yan-peng, CHEN Ke-long**, ZHANG Fei, CAO Guang-chao, LIU Zhi-jie, SU Mao-xin   

  1. Biology and Geography Institute, Qinghai Normal University, Xining 810008, China
  • Online:2011-07-08 Published:2011-07-08

Abstract: The relationship between plant species diversity and primary productivity is a hot topic in biodiversity research. Based on the 2009-2010 observation data from the sampling sites in Qinghai Lake basin, this paper studied the relations between the plant species richness and community productivity of typical grasslands in the basin at different scales. At small scales (within and between plant communities), the relations were linear positive or negative, i.e., for alpine steppe and temperate steppe, the species richness increased with increasing productivity, but for swamp meadow and alpine meadow, the species richness decreased with increasing productivity. At large scale (whole basin), the relations were mainly in single-peak type. In the basin, the species richness was from 2 to 9, and the community productivity ranged in 65-585 g·m-2·a-1. Swamp meadow had the highest community productivity, followed by alpine meadow, alpine steppe, and temperate steppe.

Key words: Caragana microphylla, Soil moisture, Kerqin sandland