Climatic condition effects on the components of plant diversity in the western Iran grasslands using multiplicative partitioning methods

• Published in: Caspian journal of environmental sciences Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 1 - 10
• Main Authors: Omidipour, Reza, Erfanzadeh, Reza, Faramarzi, Marzban
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Rasht Caspian Journal of Environmental Sciences 01-01-2021; University of Guilan
• Subjects: Abiotic factors; Biodiversity; Biotic factors; Climate change; Climate effects; Climatic conditions; Cluster analysis; Components; Conservation; Data analysis; Environmental factors; Flowers & plants; Geographical distribution; Grasslands; Grazing; management plans; Partitioning; Permutations; Plant communities; plant composition; Plant diversity; Precipitation; Regions; shannon’s diversity; Species diversity; Species richness; species richness estimators; Vegetation; Wildlife conservation; β-diversity; Iran
• ISSN: 1735-3033; 1735-3866
• DOI: 10.22124/cjes.2021.4302

INTRODUCTION Study of plant diversity changes at different spatial scales is an important aspect of diversity studies in hierarchical systems (Golodets et al. 2011). Since emphasis of conservation biologists has recently shifted from the conservation of single species to the conservation of entire communities (Devictor & Robert 2009), conservationists try to determine the spatial (and temporal) distribution of species within large areas and how abiotic and biotic factors such as animal grazing (Tahmasebi et al. 2020), fire disturbance (Moradizadeh et al. 2020) and climate change (Erfanzadeh et al. 2015), can change these patterns. [...]understanding the diversity patterns in the plant community, determining the impact of biotic and abiotic environmental factors on the species diversity, and recognizing the changes of vegetation after introducing a measure such as grazing required quantifying species diversity at multiple scales (Cabra-García et al. 2010). [...]the analysis was performed for total data coming from both regions. [...]the total plant species diversity (through species richness and Shannon index) can be described by the following formula [1] (see also Crist et al. 2003) in each region: [1]: ? = a1 (within plots) x β1 (among plots) x β2 (among sites) We could also define β3 as a diversity indicating the turnover of species among two regions. [...]the aforesaid formula [1] can be improved into formula [2]: [2]: = a1 (within plots) x β1 (among plots) x β2 (among sites) x β3 (among regions) Data Analysis We tested the significant differences between the spatial partitioning of diversity and expected values of diversity calculated by individual-based randomizations (10,000 permutations; Crist et al. 2003), evaluating whether the a-and β-diversity components of diversity differed