Diversity of Woodland Communities and Plant Species along an Altitudinal Gradient in the Guancen Mountains, China

Dongping Meng,Min Li,Jin-Tun Zhang

doi:10.1100/2012/398765

Dongping Meng, Min Li + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1100/2012/398765

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Abstract

Study on plant diversity is the base of woodland conservation. The Guancen Mountains are the northern end of Luliang mountain range in North China. Fifty-three quadrats of 10 m × 20 m of woodland communities were randomly established along an altitudinal gradient. Data for species composition and environmental variables were measured and recorded in each quadrat. To investigate the variation of woodland communities, a Two-Way Indicator Species Analysis (TWINSPAN) and a Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) were conducted, while species diversity indices were used to analyse the relationships between species diversity and environmental variables in this study. The results showed that there were eight communities of woodland vegetation; each of them had their own characteristics in composition, structure, and environment. The variation of woodland communities was significantly related to elevation and also related to slope, slope aspect, and litter thickness. The cumulative percentage variance of species-environment relation for the first three CCA axes was 93.5%. Elevation was revealed as the factor which most influenced community distribution and species diversity. Species diversity was negatively correlated with elevation, slope aspect, and litter thickness, but positively with slope. Species richness and heterogeneity increased first and then decreased but evenness decreased significantly with increasing elevation. Species diversity was correlated with slope, slope aspect, and litter thickness.

Highlights

Variations of woodland communities and species diversity are important in conservation of natural areas and have been frequently studied in plant ecology [1,2,3,4,5,6]
A prior DCA analysis provided a great gradient of 6.0 for the first DCA axis, which suggested that TWINSPAN and Correspondence Analysis (CCA) were suitable for the analyses of these data [9]
Correlation analyses showed that species diversity was significantly correlated with all environmental variables, and positively correlated with slope but negatively correlated with elevation, slope aspect, and litter thickness (Table 4)

Summary

Introduction

Variations of woodland communities and species diversity are important in conservation of natural areas and have been frequently studied in plant ecology [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The variation of plant communities and species diversity can be linked to several ecological gradients [10, 11]. The relationship of community structure, composition, and species diversity of woodland with elevation gradient and other environmental variables have emerged as a key issue in ecological and environmental sciences [6, 15,16,17]. The patterns of species and community diversity along elevation gradient have been frequently tested [10, 18, 19]

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