Relationships between species diversity or community structure and productivity of woody-plants in a broad-leaved Korean pine forest in Jiaohe,Jilin, China

Aims Based on the dataset of a broad-leaved Korean pine forest in Jiaohe, Jilin Province, this research compared the influences of species diversity and community structure on productivity. We aim to explain the relationship between diversity and productivity for better forest management. Methods We used the data of 10 973 woody-plants in a 11.76 hm² large sample plot and analyzed the correlations between 7 different indices of species diversity or community structure and productivity. Structural equation model was used to compare the effects of species diversity and community structure on productivity. Important findings The results showed that: (1) Both species diversity and community structure had significant effects on productivity when they were considered separately in linear regression analysis, i.e. species evenness was negatively correlated with productivity, the Shannon index of community structure was positively correlated with productivity and the Gini index was negatively correlated with productivity. (2) In the structural equation model, when simultaneously considered, community structure had stronger influence on productivity than species diversity. Our research suggests that, the effects of community structure on productivity are greater than species diversity and it is important to increase community structure complexity to improve forest productivity during forest management.