Study On Plant Functional Types From North-Beijing Agro-pastoral Ecotone

The study of plant functional types, which has been hailed as one of the most important innovations in studying global change, has been widely adopted to investigate the effects of global change. However, in such areas as the physiological and ecological responses of plant functional types to global changes, the adaptive mechanisms of different plant functional types to global changes as well as the function of the evolution of plant functional types in the global changes, few reports have been seen. The related research is still in the initial stage, however, they are the starting point and ultimate purpose of the study of plant functional types, and in particular, they have a far-reaching significance in forecasting global change patterns. Therefore, by conducting research on the transformations and adaptive mechanisms of plant functional types in the regional or global environmental change, we may obtain a wealth of important information of the impacts of future global changes.In this study, we carried out a study of plant functional types on North-Beijing agro-pastoral ecotone. By stable isotope measurements, we analyzed four plant functional types in Xilingol steppe and got the following results. Carbon isotope ratios indicative of C4 photosynthesis were found in 4 species of the 125 vascular plants investigated, 2 were found in Graminea and the other two in Chenopodiaceae. As for the proportion of photosynthesis pathway, C4 species makes up 3% of the total species investigated in the region, C3 Species 94% and CAM 3%. Six species have C3 photosynthesis, reported previously with C4 photosynthesis. In identifying CAM plants,δ13C method has its own limitation. Therefore, additional experiments are required. In the series of meadow types...