3.4 Sensitivity analysis of shrub species’ response to stocking rate
The response of the four shrubs to the stocking rate gradient is shown in Figure 7. The above analysis indicated that the height and coverage of the shrubs decreased significantly with increasing stocking rate, but the correspondence analysis in Figure 6 indicates that Artemisia frigida , Kochia prostrata , Caragana microphylla andCeratoides latens had significantly different responses to stocking rate. In general, Artemisia frigida and Ceratoides latens were the most sensitive to stocking rate, followed byCaragana microphylla , and finally Kochia prostrata .Kochia prostrata was the most resistant to grazing, followed byCaragana microphylla . Furthermore, the first dimension explained 82.64% and the second dimension explained 21.39%, which indicated that two dimensions were able to account for 93.4% of the data and can reflect the information of the original data.