Plant richness pattern in an elevation gradient in the Eastern Himalaya

Sharma, Narpati; Behera, Mukunda Dev; Das, Ajoy Kumar; Panda, Rutuparna

doi:10.1007/s10531-019-01699-7

Cited by 53 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…This is in agreement with other studies reporting no clear microbial elevation pattern [60][61][62]. Unlike plant [63][64][65], animal and birds [66,67] bacterial communities are known to exhibit inconsistent relationship with elevation. However, bacterial community richness, diversity and composition varied significantly between habitats as described from other alpine habitats from Tibetan Plateau and mountains in China and European Alps [22,68,69] The habitat-specific patterns of bacterial community suggest that other factors than elevation might play crucial role in shaping their community [60].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Soil bacterial community diversity and composition vary more with elevation than seasons in alpine habitats of western Himalaya

Bhattacharya

Mondol

Talukdar

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Soil heterotrophic respiration-driven CO2 emissions, its impact on global warming and the mechanistic roles of soil bacterial communities in this process have been an area of active research. However, our knowledge regarding the effects of environmental changes on soil bacterial communities is limited. To this end, the climate-sensitive high-altitude alpine ecosystems offer ideal opportunities to investigate relationship between climate change and bacterial communities. While data from several high-altitude mountain regions suggest that local environment factors and geological patterns govern bacterial communities, no information is available from the Himalaya. Here we provide baseline information on seasonal soil bacterial community diversity and composition along a 3200-4000 m elevation gradient covering four alpine habitats (subalpine forest, alpine scrub, alpine meadow and moraine) in Gangotri National Park, western Himalaya. Bacterial metabarcoding data from 36 field-collected samples showed no elevation trend in the bacterial richness and a non-monotonous decrease in their diversity. Further, their community diversity and composition varied significantly among habitats along elevation but were stable seasonally within each habitat. The richness was primarily influenced by soil inorganic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN), whereas temperature, SOC and TN affected diversity and composition patterns. Given the importance of the Himalaya in the context of global carbon cycle this information will help in accurate modeling of climate adaptation scenarios of bacterial niches and their downstream impacts towards climate warming.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Soil bacterial community diversity and composition vary more with elevation than seasons in alpine habitats of western Himalaya

Bhattacharya

Mondol

Talukdar

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…Studies on the forest of Sikkim have mostly been carried out as case studies with concentrated sampling on watershed [40], alpine forests [41,42], timberline forest [43], and trekking corridors [44], with narrow altitudinal range [42,43]. Albeit more recently, Acharya et al [45] and Sharma et al [46] performed research with samples from multiple locations but did not describe the composition and size class distribution of trees.…”

Section: Past Studies In the Eastern Himalayasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The varied species richness between forests covering different altitudes can be associated with numerous factors. Broadly, we assumed the widely reported climatic variables, namely, precipitation, temperature, and their interaction, as the prime factor for varied richness along the altitudinal gradient of the Himalayan system [46,55,56]. Another crucial factor could be anthropogenic disturbance and its intensity [27,38].…”

Section: Tree Species Richness and Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Forest Structure and Composition along the Altitudinal Gradient in the State of Sikkim, Eastern Himalayas, India

Bhutia

Ravikanth

Ganesan

et al. 2019

Forests

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Understanding the structure and composition of native forests is a prerequisite in developing an adaptive forest management plan for Himalayan forest ecosystems where climate change is rapid. However, basic information on forest structure and composition are still limited in many places of the Eastern Himalayas. In this study, we aimed to understand the diversity, structure, and composition of forests and their variations along an altitudinal gradient in Himalayan forests. The study was conducted in the Indian federal state of Sikkim, Eastern Himalayas. We carried out a comprehensive and comparative evaluation of species diversity, stand basal area, and stem density along the altitudinal gradient from 900 m a.s.l. to 3200 m a.s.l. We used stratified random sampling to survey eighty-three plots each 0.1 ha in forest communities that occurred along the altitudinal gradient: (a) lower (900-1700 m) altitude forest (N = 24), (b) mid (1700-2500 m) altitude forests (N = 37), and (c) higher (2500-3200 m)altitude forests (N = 22). We measured and identified all living trees with a >3 cm diameter at breast height in each plot. We counted 10,344 individual plants, representing 114 woody species belonging to 42 families and 75 genera. The family Fagaceae and its species Lithocarpus pachyphyllus (Kurz) Rehder. were reported as the most dominant forest trees with the highest Importance Value Index. The Shannon diversity index was recorded as being the highest for the low-altitude forests, whereas measures of structural diversity varied among forests along with altitude: the mid-altitude forests recorded the highest stem density and the high-altitude forests showed the highest mean stem DBH (diameter at 1.3 m height). One significant finding of our study was the disparity of the size class distribution among forests along the altitudinal gradient. Overall, we found a reverse J-shape distribution of tree diameter signifying the uneven-agedness. However, we showed, for the first time, a complete lack of large trees (>93 cm DBH) in the lower altitude forests. Our study highlights conservation concerns for the low-altitude forests that record high species diversity, although lacked large-diameter trees. We anticipate that our study will provide a comprehensive understanding of forest diversity, composition, and structure along the altitudinal gradient to design conservation and sustainable management strategies

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“…Along elevational gradients, species richness for each life-form taxa presents a hump-shape curve across all three regions (see Figure 3). Such pattern was also discussed in the Gaoligong Mountain (Wang et al, 2007), the Gongga Mountain (Zu et al, 2019), the eastern Himalayas (Sharma et al, 2019), and other montane regions in the world (e.g., Quintero and Jetz, 2018). Usually, ecological and evolutionary factors account for this elevational pattern of species diversity (Laiolo et al, 2018).…”

Section: Altitudinal Gradientsmentioning

confidence: 83%

Contrasting Floristic Diversity of the Hengduan Mountains, the Himalayas and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Sensu Stricto in China

Miao

Xie

et al. 2020

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau sensu lato (QTP s.l.) harbors an exceptionally high biodiversity, especially at its southeastern margin: this area encompasses the Hengduan Mountains and the eastern Himalayas, which have been listed as biodiversity hotspots. To the contrary, the plateau interior (namely the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau sensu stricto, QTP s.s.) is relatively species-poor because of its particularly harsh climate. With contrasting geological histories and environmental conditions of the Hengduan Mountains, the Himalayas, and the QTP s.s., it would be expected that floristic compositions and diversity patterns of these three regions would differ between each other. To compare the floristic diversity of these three regions, we assembled data on seed plant's distribution in the three regions based on county-level mapping from published monographs and online databases, and we then analyzed their floristic features and species diversity patterns (horizontal and elevational). We found that the Hengduan Mountains hosted the most seed plant species (8,439), as expected. The highest percentage of shrub (22.88%) and tree species (9.80%) were in the Himalayas, whereas herbaceous species (81.50%) were relatively more prominent in the QTP s.s.. The Hengduan Mountains also had the most species-rich genera (10) with more than 50% of their total species diversity in China. Also, temperate genera dominated across these three regions, with a highest percentage (77.61%) within the QTP s.s.. Across the QTP s.l., species diversity gradually decreased from the southeastern part to the northwest, and most of seed plants were distributed in the southern and eastern margin of the Hengduan Mountains and East Himalayas. Along elevational gradients, species richness all demonstrated a hump-shape curve, but the most species-rich elevation zone differed for each type of life-form across the three regions. Our study sets a base for exploring the origin and evolution of mountain taxa, as well as provides a snapshot of the current plant distribution, which will certainly be modified by climate change.

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Plant richness pattern in an elevation gradient in the Eastern Himalaya

Cited by 53 publications

References 50 publications

Soil bacterial community diversity and composition vary more with elevation than seasons in alpine habitats of western Himalaya

Soil bacterial community diversity and composition vary more with elevation than seasons in alpine habitats of western Himalaya

Assessing Forest Structure and Composition along the Altitudinal Gradient in the State of Sikkim, Eastern Himalayas, India

Contrasting Floristic Diversity of the Hengduan Mountains, the Himalayas and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Sensu Stricto in China

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