The Effect Of Goat Trail Landscape On Plant Community And Soil Moisture In Hilly Gully Loess Plateau

The grazing-paths in arid and semiarid regions that are composed of the small paths from trampling of livestock and vegetation patches. The landscape type widely distributed in the Loess Plateau, especially the goat trail landscape. We focused on the characteristics of plant community, species diversity, functional group and soil water content by selecting mature goat trail landscape, degraded goat trail landscape and none goat trail landscape using GS+9.1 software. Also, we study the distribution of soil water content in the scale of unit of goat trail landscape, analyzing that the effect of goat trail landscape on soil water content and may cause ecological effect. The results were as follow:(1)The goat trail landscape have a significant effect on the composition of plant community and dominant species. Perennial plants are dominant position in the mature goat trail landscape and degraded goat trail landscape, then, shrubs and half shrubs, last, herbs. Herbs are the dominant species in the none grazing-paths, then, shrubs and half shrubs. The goat trail landscape can improve the vegetation coverage, aboveground biomass and species diversity significantly.(2)The goat trail landscape, degraded goat trail landscape and none goat trail landscape exist in the form of patches in semiarid Loess Plateau, and that have strong spatial heterogeneity in different scales.(3)The distribution of soil water content was different in the different positions of goat trail landscape. Water resources scarcity and plants have deep root systems in the Loess Plateau. The position below grazing-paths has a higher soil water content and deeper root systems than the position in grazing-paths and up grazing-paths. The soil water content of the goat trail landscape, degraded goat trail landscape and none goat trail landscape have strong spatial heterogeneity in Loess Plateau. This proved that the goat trail landscape have a redistributed process to rainfall.(4) Goats are the main driving force of forming the goat trail landscape, goats cansignificantly change the structure of goat trail by movement and foraging.