HS PRO-SD

The relationship between species diversity and biomass/productivity has been emerged as a major scientific question in ecology. Figuring out the relationship was essential to understand mechanisms of biodiversity maintenance. Positive, negative, and no relationships were found in controlled experiments and observational researches. However, increasing evidence suggested that the effects of species diversity on aboveground biomass and productivity would be influenced by biotic and abiotic factors. It was also not clear that whether scale dependent effects on aboveground biomass and productivity. Using generalized linear regression model (GLM) and Structural equation model (SEM) to determine relationships between species diversity and productivity/ aboveground biomass under the different scales and figure out effects of abiotic and biotic factors on species diversity and ecosystem functioning. Our results showed that positive relationship was found between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) according species diversity and aboveground biomass/productivity. Different sampling scales may have an impact on the relationship between species diversity and productivity. Besides, we also found that elevation was a key factor affecting both biomass and productivity. These results suggest that species diversity is not the only factor affecting biomass and productivity, and implies that the positive correlation between species diversity and ecosystem functioning is mediated by abiotic factors.