In many arid ecosystems, vegetation frequently occurs in high-cover patches interspersed in a matrix of low plant cover. However, theoretical explanations for shrub patch pattern dynamics along climate gradients remain unclear on a large scale. This context aimed to assess the variance of the Reaumuria soongorica patch structure along the precipitation gradient and the factors that affect patch structure formation in the middle and lower Heihe River Basin (HRB). Field investigations on vegetation patterns and heterogeneity in soil properties were conducted during 2014 and 2015. The results showed that patch height, size and plant-to-patch distance were smaller in high precipitation habitats than in low precipitation sites. Climate, soil and vegetation explained 82.5% of the variance in patch structure. Spatially, R. soongorica shifted from a clumped to a random pattern on the landscape towards the MAP gradient, and heterogeneity in the surface soil properties (the ratio of biological soil crust (BSC) to bare gravels (BG)) determined the R. soongorica population distribution pattern in the middle and lower HRB. A conceptual model, which integrated water availability and plant facilitation and competition effects, was revealed that R. soongorica changed from a flexible water use strategy in high precipitation regions to a consistent water use strategy in low precipitation areas. Our study provides a comprehensive quantification of the variance in shrub patch structure along a precipitation gradient and may improve our understanding of vegetation pattern dynamics in the Gobi Desert under future climate change.
We report the discovery of four new open clusters(named QC 1,QC 2,QC 3 and QC 4)in the direction of Cygnus Cloud and select their members based on five astrometric parameters(l,b,ω,μα*,μδ)of Gaia DR2.We also derive their astrophysical parameters for each new cluster.Structure parameters are generated by fitting the radial density distribution with a King’s profile.Using solar metallicity,we performed isochrone-fitting on their purified color-magnitude diagrams(CMDs)to derive the age of the clusters.The known cluster NGC 7062 in an adjacent area is chosen to verify our identification process.The estimated distance,reddening and age of NGC 7062 are in good agreement with the literature. 相似文献
Stellar systems composed of single, double, triple or higher-order systems are rightfully regarded as the fundamental building blocks of the Milky Way. Binary stars play an important role in formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Through comparing the radial velocity variations from multiepoch observations, we analyze the binary fraction of dwarf stars observed with LAMOST. Effects of different model assumptions, such as orbital period distributions on the estimate of binary fractions,are investigated. The results based on log-normal distribution of orbital periods reproduce the previous complete analyses better than the power-law distribution. We find that the binary fraction increases with Teff and decreases with [Fe/H]. We first investigate the relation between α-elements and binary fraction in such a large sample as provided by LAMOST. The old stars with high [α/Fe] dominate with a higher binary fraction than young stars with low [α/Fe]. At the same mass, earlier forming stars possess a higher binary fraction than newly forming ones, which may be related with evolution of the Galaxy. 相似文献