Abstract: Forestry ecological engineering, an important measure for the ecological amelioration of our coastal salinealkaline land, has definite effects on the local natural ecosystem. This paper studied the effects of forestry ecological engineering on the herb community in a salinealkali land at the Yuyao section of Hangzhou Bay. On the land, a shelterbelt of 3.5 km in length and 30 m in width and between two originally existed lands, namely, farmland and wasteland, was constructed with comprehensive ecological engineering measures. The herb community structure and diversity in the farmland, forestland, and wasteland were investigated by visual and sampling plot methods, with the species, species-area relationship, frequency, biomass, summed dominance ratio (SDR), richness, Pielou evenness index, Shannon index, and Simpson index as the indicators. In the whole study area, a total of 31 herbaceous plant species belonging to 30 genera and 14 families were recorded. Poaceae and Asteraceae dominated everywhere. Compared to the farmland and wasteland, the herb community in the shelterbelt exhibited obviously different ecological traits, including varied species, enlarged minimum area, more complex structure, and increasing species diversity. The habitat filter functioned efficiently in the ameliorated zone, while the competitive exclusion did not temporarily. It was concluded that forestry ecological engineering disturbed the primary structure and diversity of the plant species in the coastal saline-alkali land, leading to a new plant succession in the restoration zone, and implying a great ecological efficiency.

Key words: arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, mycelium network, hyphal fusion, soil microorganism, plant community.