Relationships between species abundance and spatial distribution pattern of broad-leaved Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) mixed forest in Changbai Mountains of China

By using random and aggregated distribution-abundance models, this paper studied the relationships between species abundance and distribution patterns of broad-leaved Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) mixed forest in Changbai Mountains of China under different spatial scales. The results showed that both species distribution area and species aggregation degree affected the estimated species abundance. Spatial scale had profound effects on the distribution-abundance relationships. With the increase of spatial scale, the accuracy of species abundance estimation by the two models all declined. Aggregated distribution-abundance model could better estimate the species abundance than random distribution-abundance model, suggesting that most species were aggregately distributed. However, due to the different species distribution patterns under different spatial scales, the differences between estimated and observed data of species abundance varied greatly. Therefore, in order to further improve the estimation accuracy of the models, the life history of different species as well as the spatial scale and species aggregation should be considered.