The relationship between diversity and production in the zagros grasslands and shrublands

Biodiversity is an important concept in ecology which gained more attention in recent years and its various aspects have been studied. One of its aspects is the relationship between diversity and forage production which has been studied by many researchers. This study attempt to look at this relationship for mountainous grassland and shrubland of Zagros in Iran. The sampling was done on random- systematic way using 1 m2 in grassland type and 4 m2 in shrubland both along 50 meters transects. In order to calculate diversity and evenness, three indices of McIntosh, Simpson, and Shannon were used. Species richness was calculated by counting the number of species within each plot and forage production was estimated by clipping. A regression analysis with Stepwise method was performed. The results indicated that there was no significant relationship between diversity and forage production grassland. In contrast, the relationship was significant in shrubland between forage production and diversity indices of Shannon and McIntosh. Using partial coefficient table there was more influence of McIntosh index compared to Shannon index.