The Plant Interspecific Association in the Revegetated Alpine Grasslands Determines the Productivity Stability of Plant Community Across Restoration Time on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Shengnan Wu; Lu Wen; Shikui Dong; Xiaoxia Gao; Yudan Xu; Shuai Li; Quanming Dong; Kelly Wessell

doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.850854

The Plant Interspecific Association in the Revegetated Alpine Grasslands Determines the Productivity Stability of Plant Community Across Restoration Time on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Front Plant Sci. 2022 Mar 21:13:850854. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.850854. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Shengnan Wu¹, Lu Wen², Shikui Dong¹, Xiaoxia Gao³, Yudan Xu⁴, Shuai Li⁵, Quanming Dong⁶, Kelly Wessell⁷

Affiliations

¹ School of Grassland Science, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China.
² Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Ecology and Resource Use of the Mongolian Plateau and Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecology, School of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
⁴ College of Grassland Science, Shanxi Agricultural University, Jinzhong, China.
⁵ College of Resources and Environment, Shanxi Agricultural University, Jinzhong, China.
⁶ Qinghai Academy of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Qinghai University, Xining, China.
⁷ Tompkins Cortland Community College, Dryden, NY, United States.

Abstract

Grassland cultivation is the key measure for restoring "Black Beach," the extremely degraded alpine meadow in the Three River Headwater Area of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. In this study, we examined the inter-specific relationship in the vegetation community of cultivated grasslands with different restoration times through the network analysis method. The results showed that with the extension of restoration time, the development of cultivated grassland would lead to increasing neutral interactions among the plant species. The proportion of species with positive and negative associations in the community decreased, while the number of species-independent pairs increased significantly. The complexity of plant interspecific association (species network density) had more influence on community stability with the extension of recovery time, which can be used to quantify the characteristics of community structure.

Keywords: Qinghai–Tibet Plateau; cultivated grasslands; interspecific association; restoration; stability.