The Improvement of Research Content of Plant Population Spatial Pattern in Ecology Practice

QIU Dong;College of Life Sciences/The Province Key Laboratory of the Biodiversity Study and Ecology Conservation in Southwest Anhui ,Anqing Normal University;

College of Life Sciences/The Province Key Laboratory of the Biodiversity Study and Ecology Conservation in Southwest Anhui ,Anqing Normal University

contiguous grid quadrats;;spatial pattern;;dimension;;trait parameter;;aggregation intensity

Taking a Pinus massoniana secondary forest with an area of 1 hm2 as the experimental plot, the biological parameters with different dimensions for all individual plants was investigated. And the spatial pattern, aggregation intensity and the complexity of each population trait parameter under multiple scales based on the contiguous grid quadrats were comparably analyzed. The results indicated that the variation coefficient(CV) of individual trait parameter of P. massoniana represented the trend of three-D parameter(plant volume, aboveground biomass, leaf biomass and branch biomass) > two-D parameter(canopy area)>one-D parameter(plant height, diameter at breast height(DBH) and canopy diameter). The spatial pattern of plant number was strongly scale-dependent, namely its spatial pattern changed from uniform distribution to aggregation distribution with the increasing of scale. Except for plant number, the others showed aggregation distribution all the time, but their aggregation intensities increased with the increasing of scale. The CV of each trait parameter decreased obviously with the increasing of scale, but the complexity of variation of each parameter was not exactly the same, among them plant volume represented the highest complexity of variation, while the aboveground biomass the lowest. Thus, the parameter plant number itself could not reflect the population distribution pattern comprehensively, which needed other trait parameters to characterize jointly.