Abstract: Spatial distribution pattern and scale-dependent spatial variation of species diversity index are of great importance to reveal formation and maintenance mechanism of species diversity. We selected the broadleaved Korean pine forest (BKPF), natural secondary birch forest (BF) and artificial larch forest (LF) after logging in Changbai Mountain as the research objects and used variance and coefficient of variation to explore the scale-dependent spatial variation of species abundance and richness in Changbai Mountain. The results showed that: (1) the variance of species abundance increased linearly with spatial scale, while the coefficient of variance decreased with spatial scale in BKPF and LF. The variance of species richness showed a unimodal variation, reaching the maximum at the 20 m×20 m scale in BKPF and LF. It is indicated that large-scale species abundance can be estimated from smaller scales, whereas richness cannot be estimated. (2) The variance and coefficient of variance of species abundance in BF were consistent with those in BKPF, while the variation of species richness increased as the scale increased and never showed a unimodal variation. It was due to the significant increase in the aggregation degree of major tree species in BF. (3) The species abundance and richness had significant correlation each other on the small scale for all the three plots, but the correlation was no longer significant as the scale increased. Our results revealed the scale-dependent spatial variation and its reasons of species diversity of typical vegetation types in Changbai Mountain, providing data support for restoration and management of the broad-leaved Korean pine forest.

Key words: climate change, geographic distribution, Pyrus calleryana, MaxEnt