Land-use impacts on biodiversity in the soft rock area of the middle reaches of the Yellow River

Abstract

In order to explore the effect of human activities such as vegetation restoration and reconstruction on plant communities, we compared species diversity of eight major land-use types in Changchuan watershed with that of Aguimiao Nature Reserve, a control of natural background, 40 km away from Changchuan. The results showed that seabuckthorn brushwood (dominated by Hippophae rhamnoides), grassland, Chinese pine woodland (dominated by Pinus tabuliformis)，and intermediate peashrub brushwood (dominated by Caragana intermedia) supported relatively high species diversity. Intermediate peashrub brushwood, grass-land and Chinese pine woodland had comparatively high similarity with controls, with Sorensen indices at about 40%, indicating that the plant diversity of those three land-use types were more similar to the natural vegetation in this region. Synthetic Evaluation Indices (SEI) for land-use impact on biodiversity can be ob-tained by integrating Shannon-Wiener and Sorensen indices. The values of SEI of each land-use type ranked in the following order: grassland > Chinese pine woodland > intermediate peashrub brushwood > waste land > hankow willow brushwood > seabuckthorn brushwood > simon poplar woodland > crop land. Grassland, intermediate peashrub brushwood, and Chinese pine woodland should be adopted in the processes of vegeta-tion restoration and reconstruction, due to their functions of conserving local species diversity.