Biomass Allocation Of Temperate Shrubs In Inner Mongolia

Plant biomass allocation is an important parameters for ecosystem carbon estimation, also reflects the long-term adaptation to environment ecosystem carbon estimating. In arid and semiarid regions of Inner Mongolia, shrub species represent an important components of desert, grassland and open mountain ecological systems, which represent a potential vegetation carbon pool in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. Due to the limitation of sampling methodology, however, we have little knowledge on the biomass allocation patterns of different shrubs, which also limit precisely quantifying the carbon pools in these ecosystems. We built predict equations for above-, and below-ground biomass of 24 dominant shrub species sampled from sixty sites in desert, grasslands and open mountain areas of Inner Mongolia, and estimate the community biomass based on these equations. We also analyze the biomass allocation to leaves, stems and roots of these species, and the relationships of biomass proportion with environmental variables(e.g., climate factors, soil characters and plant size). The results show that:(1) power function can be used to describe the allometric relationships between above-, and below-ground biomass height, crown, and/or volume for most of 24 shrub species; (2) across all the data, the mean R/S is 1.11, ranging from 0.33 to 4.04. The proportion of root biomass (RMF) is 0.44 of the total biomass, LMF is 0.12, and SMF is 0.39, respectively. Compared to the desert and mountain shrubs, grassland shrubs allocated more biomass to belowground organs. (3) The new biomass increment in leaves and twigs decreased with the body size of plants; and (4) With the decline of RDI and availability of soil nutrient resource, the shrubs allocated more biomass to leaves. In addition, with the increasing of individual size, shrub allocated more biomass to stems, less to roots and leaves.