Assessing vegetation community distribution characteristics and succession stages in mountainous areas hosting coming Winter Olympics Games

Abstract

Alpine mountain ecosystem shows strong interactions between abiotic and biotic parameters. They also receive high attention from human activities (natural tourism, trekking, skiing, etc.). However, as the potential disturbance risk areas in alpine mountains are increasing, it is necessary to understand the relationship between environmental factors and plant communities. This is also the key consideration for the coming international events such as the Winter Olympic Games, which could generate uncontrolled ecosystem issues not previously studied. The Yin Mountains in Chongli district, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, China will be the core area of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. We hypothesize that disturbances will be caused, therefore, the previous relationships between the habitat factors and plant community and the main environmental limiting factors before hosting them must be assessed to design future restoration plans. Therefore, we used the two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN) and market basket analysis (MBA) for vegetation classification in 91 sampling plots. Plant community and relationships among environmental variables (altitude, slope position, aspect, direction, inclination, soil porosity, soil bulk density, organic matter content and soil pH) were investigated through the trend correspondence (DCA) and canonical correspondence analyses (CCA). Also, the TWINSPAN was used to classify the vegetation into 6 different groups. CCA analysis showed that i) the spatial variation of soil moisture and the content of soil organic matter are the main factors limiting the development of shrub and herb communities; ii) the distribution of different forest communities was mainly affected by terrain factors (altitude, aspect and slope position); iii) the dynamic changes of vegetation communities in different altitudes were affected by the fluctuation of environmental factors and human disturbance, and the shrubs and herbaceous plants in mid-to-high altitude areas (above 1400 m) generally show the process of transformation from the pioneer community to transitional community in the competition. We concluded that under the strong interference of human activities in the core construction area of the Olympic venues, higher damage intensity and lower resilience in the low altitude area is observed compared with the pioneer community. Whereas in the low altitude area (below 1400m) with a fragile ecological environment, although the plant diversity and coverage are poor, the potential impact and damage degree of the Olympic Games are greatly reduced due to the distance from the construction area of the core venues and good resilience. This information can help land managers and policymakers to anticipate human disturbances on plant communities and support guiding the most efficient ecological restoration after the Winter Olympic Games in 2022.