Human Disturbance Reduces Plant Species Diversity and Stability of Phyllostachys pubescens Forests

Source:
By:Ji Lei, Rong Chen, Renyi Gui, Jianshuang Gao

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30564/re.v2i1.1181

Abstract:

Plant species diversity is an important index reflecting the functional complexity and stability of ecosystems. Human activity can completely alter plant species diversity and cause serious degradation of ecosystems but its impact on bamboo forest still lacks of systematic evaluation. In this study, we performed a field investigation to reveal the influences of human disturbances on the plant diversity and stability of Moso bamboo forests at Southern China. The selected bamboo fields contained different intensities of human activities that could be classified as slight, moderate and severe disturbance level. Species richness index S, Shannon-Wienner index H, Simpson index D, Pielou index Jsw, community similarity index IS and community stability index were employed to quantitatively evaluate the plant species diversity and stability. The survey revealed that there were 203 species belonging to 83 families and 108 genera in Moso bamboo forests. The number of plant species in the Moso bamboo forests decreased with the increasing of disturbance intensity. The species diversity indexes generally followed the order of slight > moderate > severe disturbance, as well as the richness index S, Shannon-Wienner index H and Pielou index Jsw. The similarity and species stability of the bamboo forest communities also decreased with the increase of the disturbance intensity. Under the severe disturbance, plant species replacement occurred strongly. The obtained results provide some a guideline for the sustainable management of bamboo forest.

References:

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