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The relationship of characteristics of meadow communities with soil moisture and temperature in the northern slope of Qilian Mountains.

JIA Wen-xiong1*, CHEN Jing-hua1, ZHANG Yu-shun1, CAO Wen-xia2   

  1. (1College of Geography and Environmental Science, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China; 2Pratacultural College of Gansu Agricultural University, Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecosystem of Ministry of Education, Lanzhou 730070, China)
  • Online:2016-03-10 Published:2016-03-10

Abstract: Environmental factors play key roles in structure and function of grassland ecosystems. This paper analyzed the variation of species diversity and aboveground biomass of meadow communities, and the relationship between aboveground biomass and soil moisture/temperature through field investigation and laboratory analysis in the northern slope of Qilian Mountains during the growing season in 2013. The results indicated that single peaks were found in species richness, diversity and evenness from May to September. Among different meadow communities, significant differences were found in species richness and diversity, but not recorded in species evenness in May, July and September. The species between meadow steppe and upland steppe were moderately dissimilar, but those were extremely dissimilar among different meadow communities, reflecting the obvious replace of different types of plant communities along the elevation. The variations of aboveground biomasses for different meadow communities displayed a single peak in July for alpine meadow and desert steppe, and in August for meadow steppe and upland steppe. In different meadow communities, the accumulations of aboveground biomasses were positively related to soil temperature under 0-10 cm, while were not related to soil moisture.

Key words: regulation suggestion, climatic potential productivity, “sickle bend” area, spring maize, climatic suitability