BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Ecosystem Restoration
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1560323
This article is part of the Research TopicEcosystem Services and Sustainable Restoration Interlinking Soil, Geological, and Vegetation Interactions for Sustainable DevelopmentView all 8 articles
Impacts of grazing on species diversity among different plant communities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Life Sciences, Qinghai Normal University, Xining, Qinghai Province, China
- 2Sichuan Academy of Forestry, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
- 3Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
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The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a region with rich biodiversity and fragile ecosystems, and its plant species diversity is greatly affected by grazing activities. In this study, we aimed to explore the impact of grazing on the diversity of different plant communities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. To this end, we collected grazing and vegetation data for the period of 1982-2015; calculated the grazing, Shannon-Wiener diversity, inverse Simpson's, and Pielou's evenness indices along with species richness; and conducted correlation and regression analyses. The results show that the grazing index was positively correlated with the richness of grassland plant communities, and in particular, there were significant relationships between the variance and maximum value of the grazing data and plant species richness. However, no significant correlations were found between the grazing index and diversity indices in shrub land and desert plant communities. Moderate grazing promotes the renewal and growth of grassland vegetation and increases plant species diversity. Therefore, grazing management plans should be developed based on specific ecological environments to achieve sustainable ecosystem development and to protect species diversity.
Keywords: China, grazing, Plant communities, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, species diversity, Vegetation type
Received: 14 Jan 2025; Accepted: 25 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Chen, Deng, Yan, Wang and Wan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ji-Zhong Wan, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Chengdu, 610041, Sichuan Province, China
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