A REVIEW OF GRADIENT CHANGES IN SPECIES DIVERSITY OF LAND PLANT COMMUNITIES
陆地植物群落物种多样性的梯度变化特征

The study of changes in species diversity of land plant communities along environmental and successional gradients is important to understand the relationship between biodiversity and ecological factors. This paper reviewed current studies on this field. In general, species diversity of plant community decreases with changing from lower latitude to higher latitude. Along a water gradients (precipitation or moisture), there are 6 patterns in different areas and different combinations of environmental factors. In terms of elevation gradient, changes in species diversity of plant communities have 5 models. As for soil nutrient gradients, changes appear different in different area. Along the successional process (succession gradient), though the relationship is not monotonic for different environment, the changing trend of plant species diversity is the same. There are numbers of hypotheses about the mechanisms of species diversity pattern, but it has not been very well studied.