Effects of Small Gaps on the Relationship Among Soil Properties, Topography, and Plant Species in Subtropical Rhododendron Secondary Forest, Southwest China

作者：Fenghua Tang, Wenxuan Quan, Chaochan Li, Xianfei Huang, Xianliang Wu, Qiaoan Yang, Yannan Pan, Tayan Xu, Chenyu Qian, Yunbing Gu · 发表于：International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.3390/ijerph16111919 · 被引用次数：11 · 研究领域：Ecology and Conservation Studies、Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics、Agriculture, Soil, Plant Science

Background: The secondary forests have become the major forest type worldwide, and forest gap was also a common small disturbance in secondary forests. We aimed to analyze the effects of small gap disturbance on the plant species richness of subtropical secondary forest with natural regeneration barriers and examine the relationship between soil topography and plant species in a subtropical Rhododendron secondary forest of the Baili Rhododendron National Nature Reserve. Methods: The major plant species and soil topography gradient factors of the small gaps and closed canopy (control group) were analyzed using two-way ANOVA, multivariate permutational analysis of variance, nonmetric multi-dimensional scaling, random forest, canonical correspondence analysis, redundancy analysis, and a generalized linear model. Results: Small gaps had significant impact on the distribution of soil available potassium (AK), organic carbon to total phosphorus (C/P) ratio rather than slope position for soil pH and calcium (Ca) under closed canopy. Soil pH and AK followed by total phosphorus (TP) were the most important variables explaining the spatial distributions of soil properties in both habitats. Determining the spatial distribution of individual woody plant species were soil pH in small gaps, instead of lower altitude, TP, total potassium (TK) and sodium (Na) concentrations for both habitats. Moreover, Ericaceae and Fagaceae were strongly associated with pH in the small gaps. However, there ...