[1] Woody plant encroachment, a worldwide phenomenon, is a major driver of land degradation in desert grasslands. Woody plant encroachment by shrub functional types ultimately leads to the formation of a patchy landscape with fertile shrub patches interspaced with nutrient-depleted bare soil patches. This is considered to be an irreversible process of land and soil degradation. Recent studies h...

Previous studies have shown that climate warming is causing shrub cover to increase at high latitudes. Increased shrub cover generally lowers surface albedo, which results in higher energy absorption and further warming. In parts of Fennoscandia, herbivory is known to control vegetation height and abundance, and thus preventing this positive feedback. Here, we combine field measurements of albe...

Temperate grasslands are a species-rich ecosystem that may be important in mitigating the increase in atmospheric CO2. The effect of shrub invasion on CO2 fluxes in Northern Great Plains grasslands is not known. The objectives of this research were to determine CO2 and water vapor fluxes over a grazed mixed-grass prairie (prairie site) and a mixed-grass prairie that has extensive invasion of sh...

The paper presents a detailed ecological and caenotic characteristic of dwarf shrub communities growing in the highmountain belt Sangilen Plateau. investigated were referred to class Loiseleurio-Vaccinietea Eggler 1952. birch thickets with prevalence Betula rotundifolia high incidence Caragana jubata , Juniperus pseudosabina J . sibirica Pentaphylloides fruticosa Salix glauca Spiraea alpina uni...

There are less than 10% of woody species that can have both tree and shrub growth forms globally. At the xeric timberline, we observed tree-to-shrub shift Quercus mongolica Fisch. ex Ledeb.. Few studies explored underlined mechanism this morphological transition in arid regions. To examine whether affects carbohydrate allocation to verify effect life stage on non-structural (NSC) storage, measu...

Timber harvest projections for aspen-dominated forests in the prairie region of Canada include a truncation of the current age distribution, whereby old stands of ®re origin will become rarer on the landscape, while young, post-harvest stands will increase in abundance. To determine the effects this harvesting strategy might have on communities of breeding forest birds, we conducted point count...

A new method is described for the retrieval of fractional cover of large woody plants (shrubs) at the landscape scale using moderate resolution multi-angle remote sensing data from the Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) and a hybrid geometric-optical (GO) canopy reflectance model. Remote sensing from space is the only feasible method for regularly mapping woody shrub cover over large a...