Abstract: Studies on the relationship between desert plant leaf stoichiometry and soil environmental factors are of great importance to clarify the mechanism of adaptation and feedback to the soil environment in the process of plant growth. The leaf stoichiometric characteristics of five desert plants (Populus euphratica, Tamarix ramosissma,  Alhagi sparsifolia,  Karelinia caspia and Phragmites australis) were analyzed and their relationships to soil environmental factors were studied by redundancy analysis (RDA). The results showed that the average contents of carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) were 451.65, 16.98 and 1.08 mg·g^-1 respectively, each lower than the global average level of plants, and the plant growth was more likely to be limited by both N and P. The leaf stoichiometric characteristics differed significantly among the five species, in which P. euphratica had the lowest C content, A. sparsifolia had the highest N content and N∶P ratio, and Ph. australis and K. caspia had the highest P content. Correlation analysis showed that there was extremely significant positive correlation between N content and P content, while there was no significant correlation between C content and N, P contents. According to RDA results, soil moisture content, salinity and pH value served as a good explanation for the difference of leaf stoichiometric characteristics, among which soil moisture was the major factor affecting leaf stoichiometric characteristics, while the effects of soil total N, total P, total dissolved solids, and organic C contents on leaf stoichiometric characteristics were relatively insignificant.

Key words: northeast region of China., climatic potential productivity, adaptation measure, climate change