Spatial heterogeneity of community structure of Picea crassifolia forest in Qilian Mountains, China.

We selected the grid of 5 m × 5 m in a dynamic monitoring plot (340 m × 300 m) as the sampling unites and chose 5 structural characteristics (density, average crown breadth, coverage, conspicuousness and average height) to study the spatial heterogeneity of community structure of Picea crassifolia forest in Dayekou Basin of Qilian Mountains by the fractal geometry and geostatistics methods. The results showed that the order of spatial variation in these characteristics was: density > average crown breadth > conspicuousness > coverage > average height, with the variation coefficient ranging from 43.7% to 79.6%. Moran's I index indicated that the structural variables had different degrees of spatial autocorrelation, and the order of autocorrelation was density > average height> coverage > average crown breadth > conspicuousness, with the range of –0.047–0.382. The exponential semivariation model well fitted the spatial variability in different structural features, and the range was 24.6–68.1 m. The variables displayed moderate spatial autocorrelation except for coverage, while the other variables had strong spatial autocorrelation, and the fractal dimension of the variables was close to 2, indicating a low spatial dependence among variables. The variables presented a superposing characteristic of zonal and patchy structures except for density and coverage, while the other variables presented strong patchiness property. Density and coverage had a certain spatial dependence on average crown breadth, conspicuousness and average height. Density and coverage for the spatial heterogeneity of community structural of P. crassifolia forests were 10 m and 0.5 hm2, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]