Responses of alpine summit vegetation under climate change in the transition zone between subtropical and tropical humid environment.

ABSTRACT: Climate change has caused severe impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity globally, especially to vulnerable mountain ecosystems; the summits bear the brunt of such effects. Therefore, six summits in Taiwan were monitored based on a standardized multi-summit approach. We used both statistical downscaling of climate data and vegetation cover data to calculate climate niches to assess the impacts of climate change. Two indicators, thermophilic and moist-philic, were applied to evaluate the overall response of vegetation dynamics. The results revealed that potential evapotranspiration increased significantly and led to a declining tendency in monthly water balance from 2014 to 2019. The general pattern of species richness was a decline. The difference in plant cover among the three surveys show

SUBMITTER: Kuo CC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9349258 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature