BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have disclosed that a species asynchrony, illustrating the difference in species reaction rates on external environment changes, was the determinant of the temporal stability of aboveground biomass in temperate forests.
Understanding the effects of plant species diversity and trait composition on biomass above the ground has important implications for biodiversity conservation.
Thus the effects of soil nutrients, species asynchrony, functional trait diversity, and trait composition for explaining the community temporal stability of aboveground biomass need to be studied in natural forests.
Based on 10-year continuous monitoring data, the researchers from the Institute of Applied Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted research in a temperate forest of Changbai Mountain in northeast China's Jilin Province.
The results showed that the temporal stability of aboveground biomass was driven by a strong direct positive effect of species asynchrony in temperate forests, whereas species diversity was of additional importance in old-growth forest only, according to their recent study paper published in the journal Ecological Indicator.
The direct effect of species asynchrony increased with forest succession, said the paper.
The researchers then suggested that managing forests with mixtures of both early and late-successional species or shade-intolerant and tolerant species, not only species diversity, was important for maintaining forest stability in a changing environment.
