The relationship between soil physical properties and alpine plant diversity on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

摘要

Through a large - scale research, we examined the heterogeneity of soil properties and plant diversity, as well as their relationships across alpine grassland types on Qinghai - Tibet Plateau. The soil pH and EC value in creased with the constant deepening of the soil in all the three alpine grassland types which in orde r of absolute value in every soil layer were alpine desert steppe, alpine steppe and alpine meadow. Among the three grassland types, the alpine meadow possessed the highest SM but the lowest SBD. For plant diversity, alpine meadow was the highest, alpine d esert steppe ranked the second and alpine steppe was the last. SM and SBD were the highest influential soil physical properties to species richness, but with opposite effects.