The relationship between classification of herbaceous plant communities and environment in Kekesu Wetland, Xinjiang

Kekesu Wetland is a typical wetland in arid and semiarid lands. In the study, we used unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic means (UPGMA), detrended correspondence analysis (DCA), and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) to quantitatively categorize the herbaceous plant communities in Kekesu Wetland. The correlations of community composition and species diversity with environmental factors were explored. We also evaluated the relative impacts of different environmental factors on the spatial distribution of herbaceous wetland communities. Our results showed that the herbaceous communities in Kekesu Wetland could be categorized into ten types, including Carex spp. + Phragmites australis community, Achnatherum inebrians + Artemisia desertorum community, Phragmites australis + Galium aparine community, Phragmites australis community, A. inebrians community, Plantago asiatica + Poa annua community, Calamagrostis epigeios community, Elytrigia repens community, Stipa capillata community and P. annua community. The species richness ranges from 2.5 to 8.8, Simpson dominance index from 0.28 to 0.62, Pielou evenness index from 0.33 to 0.73, Simpson diversity index from 1.44 to 2.61 and Shannon-Wiener diversity index from 1.75 to 3.50 across the ten community types. The CCA ranking results confirmed that the distance from the rivers was the most significant factor that affected the distribution of the herbaceous plant communities in Kekesu Wetland. Overall, our study revealed the classification and distribution of plant communities in Kekeksu Wetland and their corresponding influential factors, which can serve as a theoretical basis for ecosystem conservation and ecological function promotion in Kekesu Wetland.