TY - JOUR TI - Magnitude of Species Diversity Effect on Aboveground Plant Biomass Increases Through Successional Time of Abandoned Farmlands on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau of China AU - Li, Wenjin AU - Li, Jinhua AU - Liu, Shuangshuang AU - Zhang, Rulan AU - Qi, Wei AU - Zhang, Renyi AU - Knops, Johannes M.H. AU - Lu, Junfeng T2 - Land Degradation and Development AB - Recent empirical and theoretical studies have shown that magnitude and direction of biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning can shifts over time. Here, we used species richness and plant abundance (total individual plant stem density) as proxies for species diversity and aboveground biomass for productivity. We used an analytical approach combining both chronosequence and 6 year of vegetation monitoring in a subalpine ecosystem as a model system to assess temporal species richness–abundance–aboveground biomass relationships at different successional stages and spatial scales. We observed that both species richness and plant aboveground biomass increased rapidly early in succession after land abandonment, then after 10 years of abandonment reached a steady state. We found that the relationship between species richness and plant abundance with aboveground biomass was strengthening over successional time. In all successional stages, species richness had stronger positive effects as compared with plant abundance on plant aboveground biomass. Species richness was linearly correlated with aboveground biomass, whereas plant abundance showed a humped-back relationship with aboveground biomass across all successional stages. Our results showed an increase in the effect of plant diversity over time, and a combination of both plant species richness and abundance is correlated with plant productivity throughout successional time, knowledge that maybe important to managing ecological restoration and conservation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DA - 2017/// PY - 2017 DO - 10.1002/ldr.2607 VL - 28 IS - 1 SP - 370 EP - 378 SN - 1099145X KW - Tibet Plateau KW - abandoned farmlands KW - diversity–productivity relationships KW - plant density KW - plant productivity KW - secondary succession KW - species richness KW - subalpine meadow ER -