Abstract:Enclosure will promote the restoration of degraded alpine meadow vegetation and soil environment. The Long-term enclosure will also lead to the decline of biodiversity and its function, affecting the stability of alpine meadow ecosystem, but this effect will vary with the change of season and habitat conditions. In order to explore the responses of ground arthropod community changes in the alpine meadows with different degradation degrees by enclosure treatments, this paper investigated the changes in composition and structure of ground arthropod community under enclosure and free grazing treatments in the alpine marsh meadow, alpine meadow and alpine steppe meadow in Shule River headwaters by pitfall trapping. The results are as follows. Forbidding grazing will affect the composition and diversity of ground arthropod community of the alpine meadow which varies with the habitat conditions of the alpine meadow. Forbidding grazing reduced the species richness of ground arthropods in the alpine marsh meadow, but increased it in the alpine meadow and steppe meadow. Enclosure had little effect on the community structure of ground arthropods in the alpine marsh meadow, while significantly reduced the activity density of ground arthropods in the alpine meadow habitats, and improved the diversity and evenness of ground arthropods. On the contrary, enclosure significantly increased the activity density of ground arthropods in the alpine steppe meadow, and reduced their diversity and evenness. Pardosa sp. was the main ground arthropod species in alpine meadow (67.0%). Different habitat conditions such as soil water availability in the alpine meadow affected the response of Pardosa sp. to forbidding grazing, thereby affecting the change of ground arthropod community structure. In conclusion, the degradation of the alpine meadow affected the response of ground arthropod diversity to enclosure and grazing treatments. Moderate grazing in the alpine marsh meadow was beneficial to improve the diversity and function of ground arthropods in alpine meadow ecosystem.