Climate change is altering plant species distributions globally, and warming is expected to promote uphill shifts in mountain trees. However, at many cold-edge range limits, such as alpine treelines in the western United States, tree establishment may be colimited by low temperature and low moisture, making recruitment patterns with warming difficult to predict. We measured response functions l...

Dead wood biomass can be a substantial fraction of stored carbon in forest ecosystems, and coarse woody debris (CWD) decay rates may be sensitive to climate warming. We used an elevation gradient in Colorado Rocky Mountain subalpine forest to examine climate and species effects on dead wood biomass, and on CWD decay rate. Using a new radiocarbon approach, we determined that the turnover time of...

Climate suitability is projected to decline for many subalpine species, raising questions about managing species under a deteriorating climate. Whitebark pine (WBP) (Pinus albicaulis) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) crystalizes the challenges that natural resource managers of many high mountain ecosystems will likely face in the coming decades. We review the system of interactions am...

Abstract Aims The aim of the study was to investigate N biogeochemistry four neighboring, high mountain plant communities and identify main factors which drive variability among them. We hypothesized that vegetation types differ in terms transformations, spatial differentiation dominant growth form can reflect an existence several N-environments along elevational gradient. Methods Plant soil ch...

Many agent-based systems rely for their effectiveness on the intelligence of individual agents, and interaction among agents is required simply to coordinate these individually complex decisions. Specification and design methods for such systems focus on the internal architecture of individual agents. An alternative approach, “Synthetic Ecosystems,” uses relatively simple agents and draws heavi...

Forest structural heterogeneity due to species composition, spatial relationships and tree size are widely studied patterns in forest systems, but their impacts on tree function are not as well documented. The objective of this study was to examine how stand composition, tree proximity relationships and tree size influence the leaf functional traits of aspen, an early successional species, and ...

Immediately before human settlement, dense tall podocarp-angiosperm forest dominated the moist Southland and southern coastal Otago districts. Open, discontinuous podocarp-angiosperm forest bordered the central Otago dry interior, extending along the north Otago coast. Grassland was mostly patchy within these woody ecosystems, occurring on limited areas of droughty or low-nutrient soils and wet...

Subalpine ecosystems are highly fragile as compared to biological andenvironmental factors. Landslide is one of the ruinous upshots of this ecosystem. One of theimpressionable areas in the cause of natural factor is Masoleh watershed in western AlborzMt, (Iran). In order to landslide hazard zonation, landslide index and frequency ratio methodbased on twelve causative factors such as slope, slop...

Theoretical advances and short-term experimental studies have furthered our understanding of how ecosystems respond to perturbation. However, there are few well-replicated experimental studies that allow an assessment of long-term responses. Results from a controlled, large-scale field experiment in a subalpine grassland near Interlaken, Switzerland, show that 2-4 years of liming (Ca: 40 g x m(...