Temperature-Dominated Driving Mechanisms of the Plant Diversity in Temperate Forests, Northeast China

Climate, topography, and tree structure have different effects on plant diversity that vary with spatial scale. In this study, we assessed the contribution of these drivers and how they affect the vascular plant richness of different functional groups in a temperate forest ecosystem in Northeast China. We investigated about 0.986 million plants from 3160 sites to quantify the impact of annual mean temperature, sunshine duration, annual precipitation, standard deviation of diameter at breast height, and forest type on richness of vascular plants (total species, tree, treelet, shrub, and herb, separately) using the gradient boosting model. The results show that annual mean temperature had the strongest impact on plant richness. The tree richness peaked at intermediate annual mean temperature and sunshine duration and increased with annual precipitation. The Shannon diversity index and Simpson dominance index increased with annual precipitation and standard deviation of diameter at breast height, decreased with sunshine duration, and peaked at intermediate annual mean temperature and forest type. The total richness and understory richness increased with annual mean temperature and standard deviation of diameter at breast height and peaked at intermediate sunshine duration and annual precipitation. A comprehensive mechanism was found to regulate the plant diversity in forest ecosystems. The relationship between tree richness and annual mean temperature with latitudinal effect could be affected by the differences in number and size of tree individuals, indicating that plant diversity varies with the utilization of energy. The force driving plant richness varied with the functional group due to the different environmental resource requirements and the life history strategies of plants layers.