Home – Home – Jornals – Contemporary Problems of Ecology 2012 number 6

Еffects of different land use intensity (phytomass semi-cutting and all-cutting) on structure characteristics of plant community and soil moisture in a natural vegetation enclosure and an artificially-aided enclosure were investigated in a sandy grassland in Northern China. No-cutting (phytomass kept nomal) was taken as the control treatment (CK). Analyzes showed that: 1) Importance value of the dominant species of different cutting treatments was in the range of 0.47-0.75. The influence of different cutting intensities on species composition was not significant for the same fenced method; 2) Both the diversity indices and the evenness index of shrub layer for the two enclosures were in the order: CK > semi-cutting > all-cutting; the similar indices of the plots of same cutting intensity and different fenced methods were smaller than 0.3; 3) The above-ground biomass of all-cutting treatment was significantly less than that of semi-cutting treatment, and CK had no significant difference from semi-cutting treatment; 4) There were significant differences in soil moisture between all-cutting and semi-cutting. The soil moisture of different layers within 80 cm increased with the increase of cutting intensities. In 0-30 cm, the soil moisture in different cutting intensities was increased with depth; however, in 30-70 cm, it decreased quickly with the increase of soil depth. Soil moisture under different cutting intensities and CK was in the following order: all-cutting > semi-cutting > CK. It proved that land use has some regulation and improvement effects on soil moisture.