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Comment
. 2008 Aug 19;105(33):11591-2.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0806579105. Epub 2008 Aug 12.

Vegetation synchronously leans upslope as climate warms

David D Breshears  1 , Travis E Huxman, Henry D Adams, Chris B Zou, Jennifer E Davison
Affiliations
Comment

Vegetation synchronously leans upslope as climate warms

David D Breshears et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Dominant plant species along an elevation gradient shifted synchronously with one another over a 30-year span that had a concurrent temperature increase, based on a new study by Kelly and Goulden (13). The ranges of the plant species' distributions remained the same, resulting in an overall “leaning” of the vegetation gradient toward higher elevation.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Types of distributional change for species on an elevation gradient, resulting from changes in growth, establishment, decline, and/or mortality: “Lean,” where the range remains constant but the central tendency shifts, as highlighted in a new study (13); “March,” where the entire distribution and its range moves upslope (5); and “Crash,” where mortality is widespread across the range (10). These types are not mutually exclusive and could occur in various combinations or sequences to affect distribution range, central tendancy, and/or skewness.
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References

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