Plant diversity and its maintenance in Populus euphratica riparian forests in the Ejina Oasis, China

The dynamic environments in riparian zones support a variety of life-history strategies, which constitute a fundamental mechanism for development and maintenance of biodiversity in riparian forest ecosystems. To demonstrate the effect of life-history strategies on biodiversity, we investigated community-level diversity and its relationship to environmental variability in the riparian Populus euphratica forests of the Ejina Oasis. Communities were divided into 14 associations on the basis of their species importance values. The Simpson’s index, Shannon-Wiener index, Pielou’s evenness index and the regional Whittaker’s index were applied to calculate community diversity. An ordination of the sample plots was carried out by correspondence analysis (CA). Biodiversity was relatively low across the entire study area, but there was high community diversity (βw = 8.09) due to the spatial heterogeneity of habitats in different plots. In addition, we investigated the relationship between biodiversity and several environmental factors, such as water availability, community components and soil conditions. We conclude that the heterogeneity of soil and water availability drives community diversity patterns in riparian zones and that community-level diversity favors the maintenance of species diversity in the P. euphratica forests in the Ejina Oasis.

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