Community characteristics of alpine meadow under different degrees of degradation in the upper area of Daitong River

A study on the community structure and productivity, and plant composition and diversity of alpine meadow under different degrees of degradation, including nondegradation, lightdegradation, moderatedegradation, heavydegradation and overdegradation in the upper area of Daitong river. Results indicated that there were more than 60 plant species, which are belong to 24 families and 51 genus, in study ared. The dominant species in was conduced nondegradation and overdegradation grasslands were Kobresia pygmaea and Saussurea pulchra, respectively. The ShannonWiener index and Simpson index in moderatedegradation (P0.05) were the highest. With the increasing of degradation, the biomass of weeds increased(P0.05), and the vegetation coverage, biomass of high quality forages, total aboveground biomass and grassland quality decreased.