Study on the characteristics of sandy alpine grasslands and its relationship between plant distribution and microtopography in the source regions of Yangtze River

Differences in Allometric Relationship of Two Dominant Woody Species Among Various Terrains in a Desert Region of Central Asia

“…This led to a decreased ability of plants to assimilate carbon, which ultimately restricted the heights of plants (Shi et al, 2015). This has been confirmed in the study of Zhang et al (2009), in which they showed that the number of dead branches and the individual mortality rate increased as the height of a tree increased in a savanna, because along with this process, their water transport system and water physiology developed into the direction that were more prone to water shortage. In addition, the study area is a typical desert ecosystem with abundant light resource and sparse plant cover, the aboveground parts of vegetation distribute intermittently, thus unlike some dense forest ecosystems, light is not an important limiting factor in the intraspecific and interspecific competition (Li S. et al, 2011).…”

“…They partially determine the contact area of plants to external resources, and are the basis for characterizing plant growth and development (Archibald and Bond, 2003;Li S. et al, 2011). The allometric relationships among the above-ground parts of plants, that is, the relative relationship between plant height and canopy radius and that between plant height and basal diameter, has an important influence on external morphogenesis and metabolic activities of plant individuals (Zhang et al, 2009;Hou et al, 2014;Shi et al, 2015). However, the knowledge of how this allometric relationship changes along the environmental gradient is scarce, which will restrict the accurate simulation and prediction about plant growth dynamics under the background of global climate change (Lines et al, 2012).…”

Data_Sheet_1.docx

“…This led to a decreased ability of plants to assimilate carbon, which ultimately restricted the heights of plants (Shi et al, 2015). This has been confirmed in the study of Zhang et al (2009), in which they showed that the number of dead branches and the individual mortality rate increased as the height of a tree increased in a savanna, because along with this process, their water transport system and water physiology developed into the direction that were more prone to water shortage. In addition, the study area is a typical desert ecosystem with abundant light resource and sparse plant cover, the aboveground parts of vegetation distribute intermittently, thus unlike some dense forest ecosystems, light is not an important limiting factor in the intraspecific and interspecific competition (Li S. et al, 2011).…”

“…Within a limited spatial scale, topography indirectly affects plant growth dynamics and species distribution through redistribution of soil water, nutrients and light resources (Zhao et al, 2019;Tang et al, 2020). As shown in Tables 2, 3, the allometric indices between H and R, H and D of two Haloxylon species were significantly different among various terrains, this might own to the habitat heterogeneity at different terrains, and also might be related to the ecological adaptability of two studied species in heterogeneous habitats.…”

“…They partially determine the contact area of plants to external resources, and are the basis for characterizing plant growth and development (Archibald and Bond, 2003;Li S. et al, 2011). The allometric relationships among the above-ground parts of plants, that is, the relative relationship between plant height and canopy radius and that between plant height and basal diameter, has an important influence on external morphogenesis and metabolic activities of plant individuals (Zhang et al, 2009;Hou et al, 2014;Shi et al, 2015). However, the knowledge of how this allometric relationship changes along the environmental gradient is scarce, which will restrict the accurate simulation and prediction about plant growth dynamics under the background of global climate change (Lines et al, 2012).…”