He Guoxing, Liu Xiaoni, Li Yali, Ji Tong
Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecosystem, Ministry of Education, Pratacultural College, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou, Gansu, China.
Sino-U.S. Center for Grazing Land Ecosystem Sustainability, Lanzhou, Gansu, China.
Front Plant Sci. 2025 Jan 20;15:1504754. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1504754. eCollection 2024.
Near-natural restoration measures enhance the stability of plant life forms in degraded grasslands, facilitating the natural succession of plant communities.
In this study, we investigated the effects of three natural restoration measures on the alpine meadows of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau: banned grazing (BG), rest grazing (RG), traditional grazing (TG), and continuous grazing (CG). We utilized redundancy analysis (RDA), variation partitioning(VP), hierarchical partitioning (HP), and partial least squares pathway modeling (PLS-PM) to dissect the quantitative relationships between the distribution of plant life forms and soil physical properties under these restoration measures.
The results indicated the following: 1) Under each restoration measure, the distribution of life form plants were predominantly characterized by the highest number of hemicryptophytes, followed by geophytes, with the least number of therophytes. We found that the BG treatment had the highest hemicryptophyte height, coverage, aboveground biomass, and importance value, while the CG treatment had the lowest. 2) After near-natural restoration, the soil bulk density (BD) was decreased. The soil moisture characteristics (MC) were increased including soil saturated water content(SSWC), capillary water holding capacity (CWHC), field water capacity (FWC). And capillary porosity (CP) and non-capillary porosity (NP) were increased. 3) VP analysis revealed that MC, BD, and CP together explained 57.4% of the variation in plant life forms communities. 4) The hemicryptophytes benefited from restoration measures and increased CP. In contrast, the decrease in BD negatively affected geophytes. In summary, restoration measures reduce BD by enhancing MC and increasing CP, which affects the distribution of plant life forms. This finding reveals the important role of soil physical properties in plant survival strategies during alpine meadow restoration.
近自然恢复措施增强了退化草原植物生活型的稳定性，促进了植物群落的自然演替。
在本研究中，我们调查了三种自然恢复措施对青藏高原东北部高寒草甸的影响：禁牧（BG）、休牧（RG）、传统放牧（TG）和连续放牧（CG）。我们利用冗余分析（RDA）、变异分解（VP）、层次分解（HP）和偏最小二乘路径模型（PLS-PM）来剖析这些恢复措施下植物生活型分布与土壤物理性质之间的定量关系。
结果表明：1）在每种恢复措施下，生活型植物的分布主要特征是半隐芽植物数量最多，其次是地下芽植物，一年生植物数量最少。我们发现禁牧处理的半隐芽植物高度、盖度、地上生物量和重要值最高，而连续放牧处理的最低。2）近自然恢复后，土壤容重（BD）降低。土壤水分特征（MC）增加，包括土壤饱和含水量（SSWC）、毛管持水量（CWHC）、田间持水量（FWC）。并且毛管孔隙度（CP）和非毛管孔隙度（NP）增加。3）VP分析表明，MC、BD和CP共同解释了植物生活型群落57.4%的变异。4）半隐芽植物受益于恢复措施并增加了CP。相反，BD的降低对地下芽植物有负面影响。总之，恢复措施通过增强MC和增加CP来降低BD，这影响了植物生活型的分布。这一发现揭示了土壤物理性质在高寒草甸恢复过程中植物生存策略中的重要作用。
