Warming-induced shrubline advance stalled by moisture limitation on the Tibetan Plateau
Wang, Yafeng (Nanjing Forestry University)
Liang, Eryuan (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Lu, Xiaoming (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Camarero, J. Julio (Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología)
Babst, Flurin (Univesity of Arizona)
Shen, Miaogen (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Peñuelas, Josep (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)

Data:	2021
Resum:	Willows (Salix) are some of the most abundant shrubs in cold alpine and tundra biomes. In alpine regions, seed dispersal is not limiting upwards willow expansion, so the upslope shift of willow shrublines is assumed to be a response to climatic warming. Very little, however, is known about the recent spatiotemporal dynamics of alpine willow shrublines. The world's highest willow shrublines (ca 4900 m a. s. l. ) are located on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and provide a rare opportunity to test their sensitivity and responses to rapid warming and the associated increase in the demand for water in ecosystems. We used a new data set comprising 24 Salix shrubline plots along a 900-km latitudinal gradient (30‒38°N) to reconstruct the rates of annual shrub recruitment and shifting shrubline positions since 1939. Shrub densification and shrubline advances were promoted by pronounced summer warming before 2010, contributing to widespread greening on the TP. These trends, however, reversed due to warming-induced moisture limitation after 2010, which thus represented a tipping point of warming/drying trade-offs. Climatic warming and drying are predicted to accelerate in the following decades, so alpine plant communities may be at an increasing risk of population decline or even range contraction.
Ajuts:	Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2019-110521GB-I00 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-1005 European Commission 610028
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Alpine shrubline ; Global warming ; Moisture limitation ; Shrub expansion ; Tibetan Plateau
Publicat a:	Ecography, Vol. 44, Issue 11 (November 2021) , p. 1631-1641, ISSN 1600-0587

DOI: 10.1111/ecog.05845

11 p, 2.3 MB

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