Testing Associations of Plant Functional Diversity with Carbon and Nitrogen Storage along a Restoration Gradient of Sandy Grassland.

ABSTRACT: The trait-based approach shows that ecosystem function is strongly affected by plant functional diversity as reflected by the traits of the most abundant species (community-weighted mean, CWM) and functional dispersion (FDis). Effects of CWM and FDis individually support the biomass ratio hypothesis and the niche complementarity hypothesis. However, there is little empirical evidence on the relative roles of CWM traits and FDis in explaining the carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) storage in grassland ecosystems. We measured plant functional traits in the 34 most abundant species across 24 sites along a restoration gradient of sandy grassland (mobile dune, semi-fixed dune, fixed dune, and grassland) in Horqin Sand Land, northern China. Thereafter, we calculated the CWM traits, the functional diver

SUBMITTER: Zuo X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4759253 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature