科尔沁沙地封育恢复过程中植物群落特征变化及影响因素

封育是退化沙地植被恢复与生态重建的重要措施, 理解长期处于封育状态下不同类型沙地植物群落特征变化及其影响因素有利于沙地植被恢复和生态重建。该文基于对科尔沁沙地长期封育的流动沙丘(2005年封育)、固定沙丘(1985年封育)和沙质草地(1997年封育)连续多年(2005-2017年)的植物群落调查, 结合土壤种子库、土壤养分以及气象数据, 分析了植物群落特征变化及其对环境变化的响应。研究结果表明流动沙丘植被盖度显著增加, 群落生物量和物种多样性年际间波动变化, 但无明显趋势; 固定沙丘植物群落存在逆行演替趋势, 具体表现为群落生物量、灌木和半灌木以及豆科优势度显著下降, 而一年生和多年生杂类草优势度显著增加; 沙质草地群落物种丰富度和多年生禾草优势度存在降低趋势, 并且一年生杂类草优势度明显高于其他功能群, 群落存在退化现象。3类沙地土壤种子密度变化不显著, 而种子丰富度在流动沙丘显著增加, 在固定沙丘和沙质草地有下降趋势, 土壤养分仅有有效氮和有效磷含量增加。回归分析结果表明气温和降水是影响年内生物量积累的主要因素, 但对年际间群落生物量和物种丰富度变化影响不大。除趋势对应分析结果显示土壤种子库与植物群落之间存在很高的相似性, 典型相关分析结果表明沙质草地植物群落与土壤养分紧密相关, 而固定沙丘群落主要与土壤水分紧密相关。综合以上结果可知, 封育33年的固定沙丘群落和封育21年的沙质草地群落都存在退化现象, 而封育11年的流动沙丘群落正在缓慢恢复, 因此封育年限的设定对退化沙地植被恢复至关重要, 封育时间过长不仅不利于植物群落恢复, 反而会使群落发生逆行演替, 建议封育年限的设定应综合考虑植被退化程度、土壤养分状况、土壤种子库基础以及气候条件等因素的影响。

How enclosure influences restored plant community changes of different initial types in Horqin Sandy Land

Aims Enclosure is one of the important measures for vegetation restoration of degraded sandy land. Understanding the plant community change of different initial types in long-term state of enclosing is vital for us to understand the vegetation restoration process or re-vegetation in sandy land. This paper aims to analyze the changes of plant communities and its comparative responses to long-term enclosure (2005-2017) of mobile dunes (enclosed in 2005), fixed dunes (enclosed in 1985) and sandy grassland (enclosed in 1997), in relation to soil seed bank, soil nutrient and precipitation and air temperature.
Methods The species composition, height, coverage and above-ground biomass were measured by quadrats in every year during 2005-2017. The soil organic carbon, soil nutrient and soil seed bank were measured by soil cores from the above quadrats in 2008 and 2017. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) were used to explore the relationship between plant community species composition and soil seed bank soil nutrients and soil moisture.
Important findings The results showed that the vegetation coverage and community species richness of mobile dune was significantly increased, but the community biomass had no obvious trend. The biomass of fixed dune community, shrubs, semi-shrubs and the perennial legume functional group dominances decreased significantly, but the dominance of the annual and perennial forbs increased significantly. The annual forbs were the dominant functional group, and community species richness and perennial grass dominances decreased significantly. The soil seed bank had no remarkable change in the three enclosed sandy land communities during 2008-2017, while the seed richness significantly increased in mobile dunes, and that of the fixed dunes and grassland presented downward trends. The soil available nitrogen and available phosphorus were increased significantly. Regression analysis showed the annual variation of plant community biomass was significantly affected by air temperature and precipitation, but there was a little effect on the inter-annual variation of plant community biomass and species richness. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) displayed that there was a high similarity between soil seed bank and plant community, and typical correlation analysis (CCA) results showed that grassland community species composition was closely related to soil nutrients. However, fixed dune community species composition was mainly related to soil moisture. In summary, the fixed dune plant community enclosed for 33 years and the sandy grassland plant community enclosed for 21 years present degraded trends, while the mobile dune plant community enclosed for 11 years is slowly recovering, thus, long-term enclosure is not always conducive to the restoration of degraded sandy land vegetation. We suggested that the influence of degradation degree of vegetation, soil nutrients and moisture, soil seed bank and precipitation should be synthetically considered when we set the duration of enclosure for restoration.