Community characteristics of wild fruit forests along elevation gradients and the relationships between the wild fruit forests and environments in the Keguqin Mountain region of Iii

In this paper, the quantitative relationship between the wild fruit communities and direct environmental factors is discussed on the basis of detailed data on landscape scale habitats obtained through field vegetation investigation. The results from TWINSPAN and DCCA showed that: 1) In the distribution sections of the wild fruit forest in the Keguqin Mountain region, the basic patterns characteristic of the different habitats are due to topographic factors, nutrients and moisture conditions; 2) The elevation affected the most basic differentiation of plant communities in the study area, indicating that the elevation condition was the most important factor restricting the distribution of the wild fruit communities in the study area; 3) The close relationship between the moisture content in the upper soil layer and the elevation reflected the influence of moisture conditions on both wild fruit and herb-layer communities; 4) Nutrient differences not only indicated that the habitat conditions were different in themselves but also showed that the present nutrient conditions of the habitats were seriously affected by human activities. In summary, under complicated mountainous topographic conditions, the habitat conditions for the communities differed very significantly, and the combination of elevation, soil moisture content, total nitrogen, slope aspect, and pH value influenced and controlled the formation of community distribution patterns in the study area.