Plant Community Differentiation and Environmental Correlates Across Wetland Settings and Geomorphic Regions Along the Han River

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

River regulation creates reservoir shorelines with hydrological regimes that differ from those of adjacent riparian wetlands, but it remains unclear whether wetland setting and geomorphic region are reflected similarly in aggregate community attributes and species composition. We examined plant community attributes, species composition, dominant-species patterns, and their associations with soil and topographic conditions across 20 wetlands in the Han River basin, China. No community attribute differed significantly between riparian and reservoir shoreline wetlands, whereas lowland wetlands had greater plant cover than mountain wetlands. Of the 28 species recorded on reservoir shorelines, 24 also occurred in riparian wetlands. Species composition showed modest differentiation between mountain and lowland wetlands but not between wetland settings, and the ordination showed considerable overlap among groups. Cynodon dactylon dominated all groups, while the frequency and cover of other common species varied spatially. Slope, fine substrate, and distance to water were significantly associated with species composition, but explained a limited proportion of the variation. Slope contributed most within the explained component. These findings indicate that spatial and seasonal variation may be expressed differently across aggregate community attributes and species patterns. Reservoir shoreline assessment may therefore benefit from considering species composition and dominant-species structure alongside vegetation cover and richness.