Impact Of Tourism Activities On Mountain Meadow In Mount Wutai Nature Reserve

In this study, having choosing mountain meadow vegetation of Wutai Mountain nature reserve as the research object, the influence of tourism activities on mountain meadow plant communities was studied by plant community classification and sorting, biodiversity, plant element content as well as the correlation of plant element and soil element. The results showed that mountain meadow community was divided into eight associations by TWINSPAN. Combining the results of TWINSPAN classification and DCA sorting results, the relationships among different plant communities and the environmental factors could be well reflected. Factors mainly influencing mountain meadow community and species distribution of Wutai Mountain were altitude and human activities. In the heavy interference intensity area, species compositions were with synarthropic plant and annual plants. Meanwhile, community of dominant species in different altitude areas also had significant difference, and in high altitude area, community mainly represented to be Kobresia myosuroides, Carex tristachya, Polygonum viviparum, etc. Besides, samples of DCA sorting and species of DCA sorting showed the consistent altitude gradient change, representing that the distribution of plant community of dominant species in a certain extent determines the distribution of plant community types.It was showed that the diversity of plant community was mainly influenced by altitude and human activities by the analysis results of Wutai Mountain meadow plant community species diversity. With the increase of altitude gradient, community diversity presented a downward trend. Affected by the interference of tourism activities, in 0 to 5 m away from the path, quadrat plants were more seriously affected by the interference of tourist activities, and the height of plant community and diversity index were low, while in 7 to 10 m away from the path, there was no significant changes in the height of plant community and diversity index. In a word, the results showed that the tourism activities caused some negative effects on Wutai mountain meadow vegetation community structure.Through the analysis of the elements in meadow plants of Wutai Mountain, there presented the negative effect on accumulation of N, P and K in dominant species such as Carex tristachya, Kobresia myosuroides and Festucarubra. The cumulative contents and the loss contents of the three elements in the dominant species were reduced with the increase of altitude. At the North, East and South Mount of Wutai mountain nature reserve, the elements whose contents in plant over 1000mg/kg were Ca and Mg (respectively 1551.13 mg/kg and 1558.29 mg/kg), the element whose average contents between 100 to 1000mg/kg was Fe (596.99mg/kg), and the elements whose average contents between 1 to 100mg/kg included Cu, Zn, Mn, Pb and Cr (respectively 11.29,30.54,39.61,3.03 and 6.51 mg/kg), the element whose average contents less than 1 mg/kg was Ni (0.95mg/kg). Compared with other reports, in addition to the high content of Fe, the contents of other elements were in the normal range, but there was no significant influence between tourism activities and plant elements. And through the correlation analysis between the elements of mountain meadow and soil in Wutai Mountain Nature reserve, there were great significant correlations between the elements of Fe, Cr in plant and the elements of Cu, Mg, Ni in soil, and there also represented significant correlations between the element of Pb in plant and the elements of Ca, Mg in soil, as well as the element of Cr in plant and the elements of Cu, Zn, Fe, Cr in soil on the North Mount. While on the East Mount, there were great negative significant correlations between the elements of Zn, Mg in plant and the element of Pb in soil, and negative correlations between the elements of Cu, Mn in plant and the element of Pb in soil. Besides, on the South Mount, the element of Cr, Ni in plant had a great significant correlation with the element of Zn in soil. The results showed that although the main elements of the plants came from the soil, its contents could be influenced by geographical location, environmental conditions, plant species, plant growth conditions, the growing season differences and the utilization of soil elements, and there was no significant correlation between the mainly elements in plants and that in soil.