Recent Forest Encroachment into Subalpine Grasslands near Mount Hotham, Victoria, Australia

Modeling shrub encroachment in subalpine grasslands under different environmental and management scenarios.

Woody plants are spreading in many alpine and subalpine ecosystems and are expected to continue increasing in response to land abandonment and global warming. This encroachment threatens species diversity, and considerable efforts have been deployed to control it. In this study, we combined a lattice model and field data to investigate the efficiency of different management strategies in contro...

6170 Alpine and subalpine calcareous grasslands

Woody Plant Encroachment into Grasslands: Spatial Patterns of Functional Group Distribution and Community Development

Woody plant encroachment into grasslands has been globally widespread. The woody species invading grasslands represent a variety of contrasting plant functional groups and growth forms. Are some woody plant functional types (PFTs) better suited to invade grasslands than others? To what extent do local patterns of distribution and abundance of woody PFTs invading grasslands reflect intrinsic top...

How Spatial Heterogeneity of Cover Affects Patterns of Shrub Encroachment into Mesic Grasslands

We used a multi-method approach to analyze the spatial patterns of shrubs and cover types (plant species, litter or bare soil) in grassland-shrubland ecotones. This approach allows us to assess how fine-scale spatial heterogeneity of cover types affects the patterns of Cytisus balansae shrub encroachment into mesic mountain grasslands (Catalan Pyrenees, Spain). Spatial patterns and the spatial ...

Precipitation in a subalpine forest

The effect of warm-season precipitation on the diel cycle of the surface energy balance and carbon dioxide at a Colorado subalpine forest site S. P. Burns, P. D. Blanken, A. A. Turnipseed, and R. K. Monson Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA 2B Technologies, Inc., Boulder, Colorado, USA School o...