Species-abundance--seed-size patterns within a plant community affected by grazing disturbance.

Seed size has been advanced as a key factor that influences the dynamics of plant communities, but there are few empirical or theoretical predictions of how community dynamics progress based on seed size patterns. Information on the abundance of adults, seedlings, soil seed banks, seed rains, and the seed mass of 96 species was collected in alpine meadows of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (China), which had different levels of grazing disturbance. The relationships between seed-mass-abundance patterns for adults, seedlings, the soil seed bank, and seed rain in the plant community were evaluated using regression models. Results showed that grazing levels affected the relationship between seed size and abundance properties of adult species, seedlings, and the soil seed bank, suggesting that there is a shift in seed-size--species-abundance relationships as a response to the grazing gradient. Grazing had no effect on the pattern of seed-size-seed-rain-abundance at four grazing levels. Grazing also had little effect on the pattern of seed-size--species-abundance and pattern of seed-size--soil-seed-bank-abundance in meadows with no grazing, light grazing, and moderate grazing), but there was a significant negative effect in meadows with heavy grazing. Grazing had little effect on the pattern of seed-size--seedling-abundance with no grazing, but had significant negative effects with light, moderate, and heavy grazing, and the |r| values increased with grazing levels. This indicated that increasing grazing pressure enhanced the advantage of smaller-seeded species in terms of the abundances of adult species, seedlings, and soil seed banks, whereas only the light grazing level promoted the seed rain abundance of larger-seeded species in the plant communities. This study suggests that grazing disturbances are favorable for increasing the species abundance for smaller-seeded species but not for the larger-seeded species in an alpine meadow community. Hence, there is a clear advantage of the smaller-seeded species over the larger-seeded species with increases in the grazing level.

Seed rain and its relationship with above-ground vegetation of degraded Kobresia meadows.

Seed rain is a crucial element in vegetation regeneration, but has been rarely studied in high altitude regions, particularly degraded Kobresia meadow. Weed infestation is a distinctive feature of pasture degradation in Kobresia meadows on the Tibetan plateau, the ecological mechanism of which is closely related with vegetation's seed rain. In this paper we assess the effect of vegetation degradation on seed rain and consider its implication for restoration of degraded Kobresia meadows in the headwater area of Yellow river, through analysis of seed species composition, number of seeds landing per m(2) of soil surface, and their relationship with above ground vegetation. Vegetation degradation had an impact on the species composition and numbers of seeds in seed rain and their relationship with above-ground vegetation. Within the un-degraded meadow, which provided a closed vegetation cover, 35 % of the seed rain was of sedge and gramineae species. However, within the degraded meadows, as the extent of degradation increased, so the total number of seeds m(-2) increased, with those derived from sedge and gramineae species forming a declining proportion of the total. Degradation of Kobresia meadow on the Tibetan plateau is exacerbated by the seed input of weed species (such as Oxytropis ochrocephala, Carum carvi, Aconitum pendulum, Pedicularis kansuensis in this study). Therefore, a major priority for the restoration of such degraded meadows should be the elimination of these weeds from the above ground vegetation by human intervention.

[Progress in application of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy to the study of ruminant nutrition].

The near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) technique has been widely used in the study of ruminant nutrition with many of its operational merits such as facility, shortcut and accuracy, etc. Study suggested that the standard error of cross-validation (SECV) ranges from 1.6% to 2.8% in predicting organic matter digestion of ruminant diet by using the NIRS technique; the chemical and biological compositions and the microbial protein proportion in the duodenal digesta can be predicted accurately using the NIRS. However, the kinetic parameters of degradation are not well predicted; The prediction of intake of stall feeding animals by using NIRS is similar to the determination of in vivo method, but the standard error of prediction is about 14% when using the NIRS to predict intake of grazing animals. All of the studies suggest that big progress has been made in using NIRS technique to predict feed digestion and evaluate the diet quality and intake of ruminant animals, which also suggest that the NIRS technique has a wide prospect in the study of ruminant nutrition.

[Spectroscopy technique and ruminant methane emissions accurate inspecting].

The increase in atmospheric CH4 concentration, on the one hand through the radiation process, will directly cause climate change, and on the other hand, cause a lot of changes in atmospheric chemical processes, indirectly causing climate change. The rapid growth of atmospheric methane has gained attention of governments and scientists. All countries in the world now deal with global climate change as an important task of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, but the need for monitoring the concentration of methane gas, in particular precision monitoring, can be scientifically formulated to provide a scientific basis for emission reduction measures. So far, CH4 gas emissions of different animal production systems have received extensive research. The methane emission by ruminant reported in the literature is only estimation. This is due to the various factors that affect the methane production in ruminant, there are various variables associated with the techniques for measuring methane production, the techniques currently developed to measure methane are unable to accurately determine the dynamics of methane emission by ruminant, and therefore there is an urgent need to develop an accurate method for this purpose. Currently, spectroscopy technique has been used and is relatively a more accurate and reliable method. Various spectroscopy techniques such as modified infrared spectroscopy methane measuring system, laser and near-infrared sensory system are able to achieve the objective of determining the dynamic methane emission by both domestic and grazing ruminant. Therefore spectroscopy technique is an important methane measuring technique, and contributes to proposing reduction methods of methane.