Coastal plant and soil relationships along the southwestern coast of South Korea

Abstract

We studied how plant species distribution was regulated by the relationships between vegetation and soil factors on the southwestern coast of South Korea. Vegetation was classified using two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN), thereby producing four vegetation groups that were linked to three habitat types. Two ordination techniques —; detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) —; were applied to examine the relationships between vegetation and 12 edaphic factors, including soil pH, water and osmotic potentials, moisture content, electrical conductivity, Cl and Na+ contents, total Kjeldahl nitrogen, and contents of organic matter, sand, silt, and clay. Results were similar for both types of evaluations. According to DCA and CCA, the 23 communities tended to cluster into three types: salt swamp, salt marsh, and sand dune. The first two canonical axes accounted for 14.9% of the community-soil factor relationship among communities. As identified via CCA, the main gradients were soil-water relations and soil texture.