Plant Persistence and its Significance on Vegetative Maintenance and Regeneration in Shilin Geopark, Yunnan, PR China

摘要

Persistence through adult sprouting is an important trait of karat plants to adopt the severe environment condition and disturbance regimes. There were 73.0% of the total 74 species sprouted at different rate. 35.1%of the stools surveyed had more than one shoots, which means that almost one third of stools had sprouts. 14.3% of the total shoots were sprouted stems≥3 cm in d. b. h, and they were the contribution of sprouted stems to the structure of forests. 57.1% of the total shoots were young sprouts ( < 3cm in d. b. h) and they were the contribution for future recruitment. There were a lot of stumps, especially at the sacred forest sites, which had sprouted a lot of shoots for future recruitment. Sprouting capability varied among species and stands representing different disturbance regimes. Totally, 20.8% of the total stools had 2-5 shoots, 10.6 % had 5 ～ 10 shoots, 3.4% had more than ten shoots. Higher degraded site have higher sprouting rates and more sprouts per individual. The significance of the investigation is that regeneration of vegetations, especially for zonal vegetation, in vegetation - degraded karsts areas can be realized through preventing the karst geopark from further disturbance of matrix pattern and unsuitable replanting.