3.4 Intra-annual community biomass stability and its
relationship with climatic and biotic factors
Intra-annual community stability of biomass (Fig. 5a; P = 0.009,
R2 = 0.23) and intra-annual species asynchrony (Fig.
5h; P = 0.000, R2 = 0.51) tended to increase during
the period 1981–2011. In contrast, intra-annual biomass stability of
the functional group PF trended to decrease (Fig. 5d; P = 0.001;
R2 = 0.35) during the 29-year observation period.
Intra-annual biomass stability of dominant species and functional groups
PR, PB, SS and AB showed no obvious change (Fig. 5b-c, e-g).
Intra-annual biomass stability of functional group PB was positively
correlated with P8 and P8-9, but
negatively correlated with P4-7, T8 and
T5-9. Intra-annual biomass stability of functional group
PF was positively correlated with P7,
P6-9 and P7-9. Intra-annual biomass
stability of functional group AB was positively correlated with
precipitation in the growing season, including P1-7,
P4-7, P5-7 and P6-7. In
contrast, we didn’t find correlation between climate factors and
intra-annual stability of community biomass, functional groups biomass
of PR and SS, and dominant species biomass (Table 1).