Open Access

ARTICLE

Total aboveground plant biomass is more strongly affected by climate than species diversity on a grassland in Liaoning, China

by Zhou C, C Busso, J Liu, YG Yang, Y Sun, YZ Fang, QQ Zhang, YB Zhou, YN Wang, Z Zhang, ZW Wang, YF Yang

1 School of Life Sciences, Liaoning University, Shenyang, 110036, China.
2 Key Laboratory for Vegetation Ecology, Ministry of Education, Institute of Grassland Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, China.
3 Departamento de Agronomía-CERZOS (CONICET), Universidad Nacional del Sur, 8000 Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
4 College of Life Science and Bioengineering, Shenyang University, Shenyang, 110044, China.
5 Hulunber Grassland Ecosystem Research Station of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
6 State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Science, Shenyang, 110016, China.

Address correspondence to: Zhuo Zhang, College of Life Science and Bioengineering, Shenyang University, Shenyang 110044, P.R. China. E-mail:

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2016, 85(all), 125-130. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2016.85.125

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze the relationships between total aboveground plant biomass versus altitude, latitude, longitude, mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation, and species diversity. Simple linear regression analysis was used to study these relationships. Results showed that altitude was significantly, positively (R²= 0.038, P<0.01) related with total plant aboveground biomass. Meanwhile, when longitude (R²= 0.124, P<0.001) and latitude (R²= 0.221, P<0.001) increased, total aboveground biomass decreased. The relationship between biomass and mean annual precipitation was significantly, positively linear (R²= 0.149, P<0.001). Mean annual temperature was significantly, negatively correlated with biomass (R²= 0.145, P<0.001). The relationship between species diversity and biomass was significant, but relatively weaker (i.e., R²<0.063, P<0.05) compared with those for the climatic variables. This is, species diversity explained less than 7% of the total variability in total aboveground plant biomass. This result agrees with the idiosyncratic response hypothesis which suggests that ecosystem function changes when species diversity changes, but the magnitude and direction of these changes are unpredictable because the roles of individual plant species are complex and varied.

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