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Alpine Vegetation Communities and the Alpine-Treeline Ecotone Boundary in New England as Biomonitors for Climate Change
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Kimball, Kenneth D. Weihrauch, Douglas M. |
| Copyright Year | 2000 |
| Abstract | This study mapped and analyzed the alpine-treeline ecotone (ATE) boundary and alpine plant communities on the Presidential Range, New Hampshire and Mount Katahdin, Maine. These are sensitive biomonitoring parameters for plant community responses to climatic change. The ATE boundary spans a considerable elevational range, suggesting that shorter growing seasons with increasing elevation only partially explain the upper limits for this boundary. This ecotone boundary may be influenced by topographic exposure factors related to mechanical damage caused by winter ice events and wind. Climatic changes that alter cloud frequency, wind, precipitation and ice loading at the upper elevations could influence shifts in the ATE boundary. The ecological and societal implications of major geographic shifts in vegetation as a response to climatic change are profound. There are many competing hypotheses about whether climatic change is occurring and the reasons for it. These include natural events such as variations in solar irradiation (Karlan 1998) to the increased accumulation of greenhouse gases of anthropogenic origin (Gates 1993). The long-term objective of the National Oceanic Atmosphere Administration’s (NOAA) Climate and Global Change Program is to provide reliable predictions of global climatic change and associated regional implications on time scales ranging from 10 to 100 years. This study establishes a biomonitoring baseline for plant community shifts due to climatic variability, based on the alpine-treeline ecotone (ATE) boundary in the Northeast. Long-term climatic conditions have altered since the retreat of the Pleistocene glaciers and climatic changes will continue to affect the ecotone boundary between the alpine zone and treeline in this region. In the United States east of the Mississippi River, alpine habitat is currently a relatively rare habitat, occurring mostly as isolated islands on higher peaks. In total, it is estimated to occupy at most about 34 km2. The majority of this alpine habitat is located on New Hampshire’s Presidential Range (11.3 km2), and Mount Katahdin, Maine (7.3 km2) (fig. 1). The remaining Eastern alpine areas are limited to several hundred hectares or less in size in northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and southward along the Appalachian Mountain Range. There are characteristics that make northeastern “alpine” mountains suited to the monitoring of vegetation responses to climatic change. They are mostly in public ownership and have relatively undisturbed histories. Their alpine plant communities have been relatively stable for extended periods of time because the dominant species are mostly long-lived perennials. The isolated nature of these particular alpine zones limits disease and herbivore impacts. Proximate weather data are also available to describe existing climatic conditions. Spatial Changes in the AlpineTreeline Ecotone as a Barometer of Climatic Change ________________ Spatial changes in the ATE boundary and the alpine vegetation communities have the potential to be sensitive indicators of vegetative response to climate change. In 1941, Griggs (1942) gave an address at a “Symposium on Alpine Ecology” to the Ecological Society of America, in which he Figure 1—Study area and alpine areas in the northeastern United States. |
| Starting Page | 93 |
| Ending Page | 101 |
| Page Count | 9 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 015 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.wilderness.net/library/documents/Kimball_3-13.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
