Abstract
Species composition and biomass are two important indicators in assessing the effects of restoration measures of degraded grasslands. In this paper, we present a field study on the temporal changes in plant community characteristics, species diversity and biomass production in a degraded temperate meadow steppe in response to an enclosure measure in Hulunbuir in Northern China. Our results showed that the plant community responded positively to the fence enclosure in terms of vegetation coverage, height, above- and belowground biomass. A year-to-year increase in aboveground biomass was observed, and this increase plateaued at the ninth year of the enclosure. Our results also showed that the existing dominant and foundation species gained predominance against other species. The sum of the biomass of these two species was more than doubled after the ninth year of the enclosure. However, belowground biomass only briefly increased until the fifth year of the enclosure and then decreased until the end of the experimental period. Plant diversity, evenness, and richness indices showed similar trends to that of belowground biomass. Overall, we found that the degraded temperate meadow steppe responded significantly positively to the enclosure treatment, but an optimal condition was only reached after approximately 5–7 years of continuous protection, providing a solid use case for grassland conservation and management at regional scales.
Highlights
Grassland provides multiple ecosystem functions in both natural and managed systems
Baicalensis were substantially higher inside the enclosure than outside the enclosure
The results of importance values of the species showed that the importance of the dominant species L. chinensis inside the enclosure steadily increased with time and reached a maximum value of 30.87% in year F9
Summary
Grassland provides multiple ecosystem functions in both natural and managed systems. It acts as an ecological barrier for, e.g., farmland systems against environmental infringement. It is by itself a production base of quality livestock products that provide irreplaceable constituents for food and nutritional security at the global scale [1,2,3,4]. The structure, function, and dynamics of grassland ecosystems have received increasing attention in the past few decades in China [8,9,10]. The grassland acreage in China accounts for 3.5 × 106 km , one-fourth of which is distributed in the Inner
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