Diversity and biomass of different functional groups of herbaceous species along an altitudinal gradient in the semi-ari
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Diversity and biomass of different functional groups of herbaceous species along an altitudinal gradient in the semi-arid Zagros mountain forests of Iran Hafizollah Shahriari1 • Kambiz Abrari Vajari1 • Babak Pilehvar1 Mehdi Heydari2
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Received: 28 April 2018 / Accepted: 5 November 2018 Northeast Forestry University 2019
Abstract The response of diversity and biomass of herbaceous functional groups along an altitudinal gradient in mountainous forests of southern Zagros, Khuzestan Province, Iran was studied by sampling vegetation in 30 circular 1000-m2 plots in herb layer of the forest floor within 646–2447 m asl (lowland: \ 1000 m asl, midland: 1000–2000 m asl, highland: [ 2000 m asl). The most important herbaceous functional groups were classified based on two aspects of growth form: annuals–perennials, grasses–forbs. Then the relationship between the diversity, richness, evenness, biomass and elevation was analyzed. The results showed that the annual functional group in the low- and midland classes, and perennial functional group in the lowland class had the highest species diversity and evenness in annual and perennial functional groups, respectively (p \ 0.01). The perennials in the highland class had the maximum total, above- and belowground dry biomass (p \ 0.01). On the other hand, the forb functional group in the lowland class had the greatest species diversity, richness, and evenness (p \ 0.01) and in the highland class had the maximum total dry, above- and belowground
Project funding: The funding of project is supported by Lorestan University, Iran. The online version is available at http://www.springerlink.com Corresponding editor: Chai Ruihai. & Kambiz Abrari Vajari [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Forestry Department, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran
2
Forestry Department, Natural Resources and Agriculture Faculty, Ilam University, Ilam, Iran
dry biomass in the grass and forb functional groups (p \ 0.01). Increasing the diversity, richness, and species evenness resulted in a decrease in the plant dry biomass. Keywords Biodiversity Biomass Herbaceous functional groups Zagros forests
Introduction The understory community is a major component of many processes in forest ecosystems (Suchar and Crookston 2010) and considered an efficient ecological indicator of forest health (Kerns and Ohmann 2004). Changes in dominance structure of functional groups of the ground vegetation can influence ecosystem processes (Nilsson and Wardle 2005) and biodiversity (Suchar and Crookston 2010). Thus, changes in ground vegetation may be used as an indicator of variations in the dominant tree species influencing forest biodiversity and function (Nilsson and Wardle 2005; Suchar and Crookston 2010). One of the important issues in plant ecology is to determine what mechanisms contribute to the co-occurrence of species and how these mechanisms affect ecosystem functions (Sutherland et al. 2013). The ecological similarity of specie
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