Characteristics of plant community succession on abandoned farmland in the Hilly-Gully Region of Loess Plateau
In order to understand the characteristics and model of plant communities succession in the Hilly-Gully Region of northern Shaanxi Province, an investigation in 20 abandoned farmlands with different ages was carried out through the approach of substituting the temporal serial with spatial serial at Zhifanggou Watershed. The results showed that the abandoned farmland successive phases were affirmed. The successive phases were as follows: Artemisia capillaries community-Weeds-Setaira viridis community-Stipa bungeana community-Artemisia sacrorum community-Artemisia giraldii community. The Shannon-Wiener index, Simpson index, Margalef index and Pielou index also increased in the succession process, but the rising rates of them were different. The species patterns of initial and middle succession stage appeared as logarithmic series distribution, which implies that niche pre-emption was the main factor in controlling the structure. The species patterns of the later stage performed as lognormal distribution, their community structures could be affected by niche pre-emption, seed invasion stress of the nearby community, interspecies competition and other factors concurrently. Coverage change and community succession time were related to the quadratic function.
abandoned farmlandcommunity successiondiversitythe Hilly-Gully Region of Loess Plateau