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. 2022 Apr 12:13:870613.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.870613. eCollection 2022.

Effects of Strong Earthquake on Plant Species Composition, Diversity, and Productivity of Alpine Grassland on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Hui Zuo  1 , Hao Shen  1 , Shikui Dong  1 , Shengnan Wu  1 , Fengcai He  1 , Ran Zhang  1 , Ziying Wang  1 , Hang Shi  1 , Xinghai Hao  1 , Youquan Tan  1 , Chunhui Ma  1 , Shengmei Li  1 , Yongqi Liu  1 , Feng Zhang  1
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Free PMC article

Effects of Strong Earthquake on Plant Species Composition, Diversity, and Productivity of Alpine Grassland on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Hui Zuo et al. Front Plant Sci. .
Free PMC article

Abstract

Earthquakes occur frequently in fragile alpine grassland areas on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), but few studies have evaluated the impacts of seismo-fault of earthquake on alpine grassland vegetation diversity. In this study, we conducted a field survey of plant communities of alpine grassland along the fault zone in the 7.4 Maduo earthquake occurred on 22 May 2021. Surrounding grassland habitat far from the seismo-fault of earthquake was selected as the control. Plant community metrics around and far from seismic rupture were studied. The results showed that plant community metrics were negatively affected by seismo-fault of earthquake. Species composition around seismo-fault was being shifted from sedges-dominant into forbs-dominant. In addition, the diversity and aboveground biomass were significantly decreased around seismo-fault compared with the control. Our findings highlighted that earthquakes can cause species loss and plant community shift and finally lead to productivity reduction of alpine grassland. Additionally, forbs may be more competitive than other functional groups after the earthquake.

Keywords: alpine grasslands; plant productivity; seismo-fault; species diversity; vegetation composition.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Location map of sampling sites.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Non-metric multidimensional scaling plot of the species composition between the seismic fracture sites and the control sites. Dots of the same color come from the same group. Each small dot represents a site replication, and each large dot represents the mean value of sites replications. Circles indicate the 95% confidence of the mean value.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The importance values of functional groups in different seismic regions.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Diversity indices in different seismic regions. (A) Shannon–Wiener index, (B) Simpson index, (C) inverse Simpson index, (D) species richness index, and (E) species evenness index. Vertical bars represent the SE of mean. Asterisks on the SE bars show significant differences between the control (gray bars) and seismo-fault (black bars) (***p < 0.001).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Aboveground biomass in different seismic regions. Asterisks indicate differences among treatments (**p < 0.01). Different colors represent different sampling sites.
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