Extreme climate events counteract the effects of climate and land-use changes in Alpine treelines.

ABSTRACT: 1. Climate change and extreme events, such as drought, threaten ecosystems worldwide and in particular mountain ecosystems, where species often live at their environmental tolerance limits. In the European Alps, plant communities are also influenced by land-use abandonment leading to woody encroachment of subalpine and alpine grasslands. 2. In this study, we explored how the forest-grassland ecotone of Alpine treelines will respond to gradual climate warming, drought events and land-use change in terms of forest expansion rates, taxonomic diversity and functional composition. We used a previously validated dynamic vegetation model, FATE-HD, parameterised for plant communities in the Ecrins National Park in the French Alps. 3. Our results showed that intense drought counteracted the forest

SUBMITTER: Barros C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5489083 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature