Based on vegetation communities inside and outside fish-scale pits on the different slopes of small watershed

the relationships between vegetation comm u nities inside and outside fish-scale pits and latitude as well as slope aspect are discussed.The results d rawn from this case study are as follows:(1) The coverage of t he vegetation community inside fish-scale pits on northern slope is higher than that on southern slope

reaching a very significant level.(2) Slope aspect is not the dominant factor in determining the diversity of the vegetation communities.(3) The relationships between altitude and the vegetation community richness outside fish-scale pits with different land uses

Shannon-Wiener indexes

and indexes for the vegetation communities inside and outside fish-scale pits with the same land use pattern can be described by parabolic functions

reaching a remarkably significant level.However

the relationship between altitude and diversity indexes of vegetation communities inside fish-scale pits does not reach a significant level.The results imply that community diversity can be increased by methods of changing niche

such as fish-scale pit preparation.