Abstract
Numerous studies related to the diversity-productivity relationships have mainly focused on the effects of species diversity, function diversity, and nonspatial structural diversity (e.g., variations of diameter), but have overlooked the significant roles of spatial structural diversity. Therefore, the motivation of the present study was to develop a comprehensive index of stand spatial structural diversity (H′) by integrating the strengths of the Shannon-Wiener index and the quaternion joint probability distribution of commonly used neighborhood-based parameters, namely the uniform angle index (W), mingling index (M), diameter dominance index (U) and crowdedness index (C). The application abilities of the index were tested using ten 100 m ×100 m sample plots that were distributed in three different climate zones [4 plots in Greater Khingan Mountains (GKM), 2 plots in Lesser Khingan Mountains (LKM), 4 plots in Changbai Mountains (CBM)] in Heilongjiang Province, northeast China. Meanwhile, the potential driving factors on stand spatial structural diversity were also detected using stepwise regression and hierarchical partitioning techniques based on 3000 simulated stands. The results indicated that the average values of H′ at GKM, LKM, and CBM were 0.8436, 0.8079, and 0.8098, suggesting that the stand spatial structural diversities of the forests in GKM were notably higher than those in LKM and CBM. The characteristics of M, C, and W emerged as the three most influential factors driving stand spatial structural diversity. This study contributes significantly not only by providing an effective index for measuring stand spatial structural diversity, but also by streamlining the complex decision processes associated with optimizing stand spatial structure.
Published Version
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