How long should the fully hillside-closed forest protection be implemented on the Loess Plateau, Shaanxi, China?
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Plant Science, Soil Science
- Keywords
- Pinus tabulaeformis, Optimal Protection Age, Restoration, the Loess Plateau, Fully Hillside-closed Forest Protection
- Copyright
- © 2017 Hou et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. How long should the fully hillside-closed forest protection be implemented on the Loess Plateau, Shaanxi, China? PeerJ Preprints 5:e2773v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2773v1
Abstract
Background. Restoration of degraded forest ecosystem is crucial for regional sustainable development. To protect the country’s fragile and fragmented environment, the Chinese government has initiated an ecological engineering, the Natural Forest Protection Program in seventeen provinces in China since 1998. Fully hillside-closed forest protection (vegetation restoration naturally without any artificial disturbance) was one of vital measures of the Natural Forest Protection Program applied national wide. Whether plant diversity, biomass and age structure of dominant tree species and soil nutrients in protected stands may become better with increase of protected period are still open problems.
Methods. We investigated community diversity, biomass of dominant tree species, age structures, and analyzed soil chemical properties of a Pinus tabulaeformis population at protected sites representing different protected ages at Huanglongshan Forest Bureau on the Loess Plateau, Shaanxi, China.
Results. Plant species richness of Pinus tabulaeformis community was significantly affected (p<0.05) by forest protection and the effect attenuated with protection age.Shannon evenness index of plant species generally increased with protection age. Stands protected for 45 years had the highest tree biomass and considerable natural regeneration capacity. Contents of organic carbon, available phosphorus and available potassium in top soil increased in protected stands less than 45 years, however decreased significantly thereafter. Long-term forest protection also decreased content of mineral nitrogen in top soil.
Discussion. We found that richness of shrubs and herbs was significantly affected by forest protection, and evenness indices of tree, shrub and herb increased inconsistently with protected ages. Forest protection created more complex age structures and tree densities with increasing age of protection. Content of soil mineral nitrogen at 0-20 cm soil depth showed a decreasing trend in stands of up to 30 years. Soil available phosphorus and potassium contents were higher in stands with greater proportions of big and middle trees. Long-term protection (> 45 years) of Pinus tabulaeformisstand in southeast Loess Plateau, China, may be associated with decreasing plant species richness, proportion of medium to large trees, dominant biomass of Pinus tabulaeformis and soil nutrients.
Author Comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ.