Department of Biology, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia.
Department of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
PLoS One. 2021 Mar 12;16(3):e0247966. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247966. eCollection 2021.
Plant community types are influenced by topographic factors, the physical and chemical properties of soil. Therefore, the study was carried out to investigate the relationships of soil and topographic factors on the distribution of species and plant community formation of the Dega Damot district in Northwestern Ethiopia. Vegetation and environmental data were collected from 86 plots (900 m2). Agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis and redundancy analysis (RDA) with R software were used to identify plant communities and analyze the relationship between plant community types and environmental variables. Five plant community types were identified: Erica arborea-Osyris quadripartita, Discopodium penninervium-Echinops pappii, Olea europaea -Scolopia theifolia, Euphorbia abyssinica-Prunus africana, Dodonaea anguistifolia-Acokanthera schimperi. The RDA result showed that the variation of species distribution and plant community formation were significantly related to altitude, organic matter, moisture content, slope, sand, pH, EC, total nitrogen and phosphorus. Our results suggest that the variation of plant communities (Community 1, 2, 3, and 4) were closely related to environmental factors, including altitude, moisture content, OM, slope, sand, pH, EC, soil nitrogen, and phosphorus, among which altitude was the most important one. However, all the measured environmental variables are not correlated to Dodonaea anguistifolia-Acokanthera schimperi community type. Therefore, it can be concluded that some other environmental variables may influence the species composition, which is needed to be further investigated.
植物群落类型受地形因素和土壤理化性质的影响。因此，本研究旨在探讨土壤和地形因素对埃塞俄比亚西北部德加大坝地区物种分布和植物群落形成的关系。从 86 个样方（900m2）中收集了植被和环境数据。使用 R 软件对植物群落类型和环境变量之间的关系进行了凝聚层次聚类分析和冗余分析（RDA）。共鉴定出 5 种植物群落类型：Erica arborea-Osyris quadripartita、Discopodium penninervium-Echinops pappii、Olea europaea-Scolopia theifolia、Euphorbia abyssinica-Prunus africana、Dodonaea anguistifolia-Acokanthera schimperi。RDA 结果表明，物种分布和植物群落形成的变化与海拔、有机质、含水量、坡度、沙、pH 值、EC 值、总氮和磷显著相关。我们的研究结果表明，植物群落（群落 1、2、3 和 4）的变化与环境因素密切相关，包括海拔、水分含量、OM、坡度、沙、pH 值、EC 值、土壤氮和磷，其中海拔是最重要的因素。然而，所有测量的环境变量都与 Dodonaea anguistifolia-Acokanthera schimperi 群落类型不相关。因此，可以得出结论，某些其他环境变量可能会影响物种组成，这需要进一步研究。
