Overgrazing is considered one of the key disturbance factors that results in alpine grassland degradation in Tibet. Grazing exclusion by fencing has been widely used as an approach to restore degraded grasslands in Tibet since 2004. Is the grazing exclusion management strategy effective for the vegetation restoration of degraded alpine grasslands? Three alpine grassland types were selected in T...

The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) contains the largest permafrost area in a high-altitude region in the world, and the unique hydrothermal environments of the active layers in this region have an important impact on vegetation growth. Geographical locations present different climatic conditions, and in combination with the permafrost environments, these conditions comprehensively affect the loc...

The Heihe River is the second largest inland basin in China; runoff in the upper reach greatly affects the socio-economic development in the downstream area. The relationship between spatial vegetation patterns and catchment hydrological processes in the upper Heihe basin has remained unclear to date. In this study, a distributed ecohydrological model is developed to simulate the hydrological p...

High-elevation ecosystems, such as those on Mount Kenya are undergoing significant changes, with accelerated glacial ice losses over the twentieth century creating new space for alpine plants to establish. These ecosystems respond rapidly to climatic variability and within decades of glacial retreat, Afroalpine pioneering taxa stabilize barren land and facilitate soil development, promoting com...

According to some treatises, arctic and alpine sub-biomes are ecologically similar, whereas others find them highly dissimilar. Most peculiarly, large areas of northern tundra highlands fall outside of the two recent subdivisions of the tundra biome. We seek an ecologically natural resolution to this long-standing and far-reaching problem. We studied broad-scale patterns in climate and vegetati...

Seasonal changes over 2 years (2004–2006) in soil moisture content ( v) of frozen alpine frost meadow soils of the QinghaiTibet plateau permafrost region under three different levels of vegetation cover were investigated. Vegetation cover and air temperature changes had significant effects (synergistic effect) on v and its distribution in the soil profile. During periods of soil freezing or tha...

Recently, plant-derived methane (CH(4)) emission has been questioned because limited evidence of the chemical mechanism has been identified to account for the process. We conducted an experiment with four treatments (i.e. winter-grazed, natural alpine meadow; naturally restored alpine meadow eight years after cultivation; oat pasture and bare soil without roots) during the growing seasons of 20...

Deyeuxia angustifolia (Komarov) Y. L Chang is an herb species originating from the birch forests in the Changbai Mountain. Recently, this species has been found encroaching into large areas in the western slopes of the alpine tundra in the Changbai Mountain, threatening the tundra ecosystem. In this study, we systematically assessed the response of the rhizosphere soil microbial to D. angustifo...

Worldwide, many plant species are experiencing an earlier onset of spring phenophases due to climate warming. Rapid recent temperature increases on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) have triggered changes in the spring phenology of the local vegetation. However, remote sensing studies of the land surface phenology have reached conflicting interpretations about green-up patterns observed on the TP since ...

It has been suggested that airborne laser scanning (ALS) could be used for operational monitoring of vegetation changes in the alpine tree line caused by climate change. Because the vegetation is low in such tree-less areas close to the alpine zone, the accuracy of the digital terrain model (DTM) becomes crucial for early detection of, e.g., pioneer trees representing an ongoing tree migration ...