The Treeline Ecotone in Rolwaling Himal, Nepal: Pattern-Process Relationships and Treeline Shift Potential

Schickhoff, Udo; Bobrowski, Maria; Böhner, Jürgen; Bürzle, Birgit; Chaudhary, Ram Prasad; Müller, Michael; Scholten, Thomas; Schwab, Niels; Weidinger, Johannes T.

doi:10.1007/978-981-19-4476-5_5

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

References 158 publications

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“…Although presumably more rapid, the elevation shifts of tree limits presented here, line up with results of many other surveys (Remy 2012;Hansson et al 2021;Scherrer et al 2020;André et al 2023 for P. cembra;Schickhoff et al 2023;Mienna et al 2024). Several of these studies referred to the lag of such shifts behind the rise of temperature (Davis et al 2020;Rees et al 2020;Lu et al 2021).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Once the climate warms above a threshold, upright tree stems emerge from such thickets (Pereg and Payette 1998;Gamache and Payette 2004). In line with our observations, Schickhoff et al (2023) report a lagging of upper tree limits behind climatic change and high growing season mean soil temperature (7.5 ± 0.6 °C) at 10 cm depth in Rolwaling (Nepal).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Several of these studies referred to the lag of such shifts behind the rise of temperature (Davis et al 2020;Rees et al 2020;Lu et al 2021). Except for Schickhoff et al (2023), these observations suffer from two limitations: (1) often vague or inexistent definitions of what is a treeline and (2) lack of ground truth temperature data. So, it was difficult to separate temperature from land userelated tree abundance (Didier 2001;Gehrig-Fasel et al 2007;Ameztegui et al 2015;Shi et al 2022;He et al 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rapid advance of climatic tree limits in the Eastern Alps explained by on-site temperatures

Körner,

Hiltbrunner

2024

Reg Environ Change

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In the European Alps, mean temperature has risen by 2.5 K since the end of the nineteenth century. A 2 K warming of the growing season has taken place in the last 4 decades only. The 2.5 K warming should rise the position of the climatic treeline by about 400 m. Actual shifts in uppermost tree positions reported here for the Austrian Defereggen Valley and the Swiss Lower Engadine region of the Eastern Alps reach only around 140 m of elevation above the limit of old trees that date back to the nineteenth century. Uppermost Pinus cembra trees of > 2 m height currently occur at c. 2500 m, representing elevation records for the Eastern Alps. In situ temperature records for 2022–2023 revealed seasonal mean temperatures for uppermost trees that are 1–3 K higher than the equilibrium treeline isotherm of c. 6 °C in both regions (corrected for temperature anomalies from long-term records). The 2 K span reflects microhabitat differences and two ways to define the season. Thus, tree advances lag behind the upslope shift of the treeline isotherm, on average, by more than 200 m. The uppermost trees currently grow under quite warm conditions with annual shoot length increments frequently reaching 20 cm. Even without additional future warming, the new steady-state climatic treeline will exceed the Holocene maximum elevation in the Eastern Alps substantially.

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