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Question: Understanding the mechanisms underlying how habitat degradation, topography and rainfall variability interactively affect seed distribution and seedling recruitment is crucial for explaining plant Community patterns and dynamics. Interactions between these major factors were studied together in a semiarid sand dune grassland.

Location: Eastern Inner Mongolia, China.

Methods: The Study system used four sites of fixed, semifixed, semishifting and shifting sand dune grasslands, representing a gradient of habitat degradation. We investigated the density of germinable seeds deposited in the top 5 cm of soil and in situ seedling emergence (number of seedlings emerging early in the growing season) and establishment (number of plants recruited at the end of the growing season) at three topographic positions (dune top, windward and leeward sides) within each site over 2 years that differed in rainfall. Habitat characteristics (i.e. vegetation cover, plant species composition and diversity, soil moisture and nutrient availability and soil erodibility) of the four sites were also measured.

Results: Habitat degradation (i.e. decreased vegetation cover and enhanced wind erosion rate) significantly reduced the size of the germinable soil seed bank. On average, germinable seed number from the high-vegetation cover fixed dune was 36-fold larger than the low-vegetation cover shifting dune, and eight- and two-fold larger, respectively, than the semishifting and semifixed dunes with intermediate vegetation cover. We observed within-habitat variability in seed distribution, but among-topographic position variation differed among habitats. Seedling recruitment showed large between-year, and among- and within-habitat variability, but these variations varied significantly depending on the response variables evaluated (i.e. initial seedling density, final plant density, emergence rate and recruitment rate). Path analysis revealed complex density-dependent positive and negative, direct and indirect effects of germinable seed density and initial seedling density on recruitment, but the relative importance of these density-dependent effects varied depending on habitat type and rainfall availability.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that habitat degradation, microtopography and rainfall availability interact in shaping sand dune seed bank and plant community recruitment patterns and dynamics. Their effects were mainly mediated through changes in both the biotic and abiotic environment during the process of habitat deterioration.