Subjects: Biology >> Botany >> Applied botany submitted time 2021-04-29 Cooperative journals: 《广西植物》
Abstract： The impact of Eucalyptus plantations on the ecological environment has been a hot topic of controversy worldwide. The ecological and environmental effects of a mixture of Eucalyptus and precious native tree species have attracted much attention. In order to explore the effects of management measures in mixed plantations on soil nutrients and understory plant functional groups, we assessed the understory plant communities and environmental factors using pure Eucalyptus plantations (PE), mixed Eucalyptus and Castanopsis hystrix plantations (MEC), and pure C. hystrix plantations (PCH). We found significant differences in the physicochemical properties of soil in the different stands. The soil pH, available nitrogen (AN) content, and available phosphorus (AP) content were significantly higher in MEC than in PE and PCH. However, we noted no significant advantages in terms of the soil moisture content (SMC), soil organic carbon (SOC) content, total nitrogen (TN) content, C:N ratio, and C:P ratio in MEC, with a trend of PE < MEC < PCH. On the other hand, the soil bulk density (SBD) and total phosphorus (TP) content showed a trend of PE > MEC > PCH. MEC significantly increased the species richness of the understory woody functional group (WFG), while PCH significantly increased the species richness of the ferns functional group (FeFG). The importance value of WFG and the Gramineae functional group (GFG) was significantly higher in MCH than in PCH, while the importance value of FeFG was significantly higher in PCH than in MCH. Principal coordinate analysis revealed no significant difference in the composition of understory plant functional groups between MEC and PE but revealed a significant difference between MEC and PCH. Moreover, redundancy analysis revealed that AN and AP were the main factors influencing the dominance of WFG. SMC, TN content, and SOC content were the main factors influencing the dominance of FeFG, while SBD was the main factor influencing the dominance of GFG. Thus, the mixture of Eucalyptus and C. hystrix could improve the availability of soil nutrients and the diversity of understory plant communities to some extent in subtropical China.
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