Fig. 3

NMDS ordination of the species composition of the aboveground vegetation (VE11-14) and soil seed bank (SB11-14) for all the quadrats as a whole in four measured years (2011–2014). Shown are a all species; b shrub species; c perennial herb species; d annual herb species. The location of ordination points within each diagram indicate the degree of similarity between each one in the first two axes of NMDS. Colored ellipses represent different species groups based on 85% level confidence intervals. In figure a, arrows represent the temporal change of the ordination points of the soil seed bank and aboveground vegetation. The ordination distances within the aboveground vegetation, the seed bank, and between these two groups are shown in values above the different line segments, respectively. The length of line segments represent the relative magnitude of ordination distance for each group. The detailed statistics results about the ordination distances are listed in Table 2