A Phytosociological Study on Subalpine Degraded Meadow in ShangriLa County

A phytosociological study was conducted on the degraded subalpine meadow in ShangriLa County, northwestern part of Yunnan Province. The results showed that there were mainly 4 types of phytocoenosis in the degraded subalpine meadow, namely Ligularia vellerea community, Ligularia duciformis community, Iris bulleyana community and Euphorbia jolkinii community. There were totally 140 vascular plant species in the 4 types of communities, belonging to 95 genera of 37 families. The species number of the widely distributed families were in the order as Compositae, Polygonaceae, Scrophulariaceae, Rosaceae, and Ranunculaceae. None of the predominant plant species in the 4 major degraded subalpine meadow communities was edible to the domestic animals. The values of ShannonWiener index, Simpson index and Pielou index of the 4 major types of degraded subalpine meadows were very close, the most possible reason was that all the degenerated meadows belonged to the secondary vegetation with low richness of biodiversity, and the communities were all dominated by single predominant species. It was supposed that overgrazing and selected feeding of the livestock were the major reasons leading to degradation of the subalpine meadows in ShangriLa County.