Table 1.
Comparison of the Three Gorges Reservoir and other large reservoirs with similar size in the world.
Figure 1.
Spatial distribution of the twelve sites sampled in 2010.
The sites sampled in 2009 were mostly the same and were mapped previously [13]. The Three Gorges Reservoir Area is a combination of all the counties around the reservoir.
Table 2.
General environmental characteristics of the twelve sampling sites in the drawdown area of the Three Gorges Reservoir.
Figure 2.
Water level of the Three Gorges Reservoir between August 2006 and December 2010.
Data originate from the daily records of the Three Gorges Dam hydrology station (http://www.ctgpc.com.cn/index.php). The vertical arrows indicated the period for field sampling.
Table 3.
Submerged duration along the elevation of the drawdown area of the Three Gorges Reservoir in 2008 and 2009.
Table 4.
Comparison of the absolute number and percentage of each life form category in the drawdown area before impoundment by the Three Gorges Dam and after impoundment in both 2009 and 2010.
Table 5.
Comparison of total established sites number in twelve sampling sites of eight woody plant species in both 2009 and 2010.
Figure 3.
Life form percentage, species richness in plot (mean±SD), Shannon-Wiener Index (mean±SD) and above-ground biomass (mean±SD) of vegetation communities across the elevation zones in 2009 and 2010.
Life form percentage was calculated by total recorded plant species date in each elevation zone. Different letters (a, b, c) above the boxes indicate significant differences for P<0.05.
Table 6.
Spearman rank correlation matrix (rs) among biodiversity indices, above-ground biomass and environmental factors.
Figure 4.
CCA diagram for the relationship between environmental variables and plant species in the DATGR in 2009(a) and 2010 (b).
Abbreviations see Table 6.
Table 7.
Results of CCA for the relationship between environmental variables and vegetation in the DATGR in 2009 and 2010.
Figure 5.
Plantago fengdouensis on one side bar at the head of the Three Gorges Reservoir.
Photo by Qiang Wang.
Figure 6.
An example of the drawdown area of the Three Gorges Reservoir beside the mainstream of the Yangtze River in Badong County, Hubei Province, on August 2010, showing unaltered vegetation above the 175 m high water mark, summer growth of vegetation between the winter and summer flooding marks, and the bare ground resulting from alternating summer flooding at the lowest level.
Approximate superimposed sampling elevation zones were marked to exhibit relative position between them and the flooding of winter and summer. Photo by Qiang Wang.