Vegetation Geo-climatic Zonation in the Rocky Mountains, Northern Utah, USA  

作　　者：Antonin KUSBACH Helga VAN MIEGROET Janis L.BOETTINGER James N.LONG 

机构地区：[1]Department of Wildland Resources and Ecology Center, Utah State University [2]Utah State University [3]Department of Forest Botany, Dendrology and Geobiocoenology, Mendel University in Brno

出　　处：《Journal of Mountain Science》2014年第3期656-673,共18页山地科学学报（英文）

基　　金：supported in part by the Ecology Center, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, Forest Supervisor’s Office, and the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Utah State University,USA and approved as journal paper no. 8235

摘　　要：We developed a vegetation geo-climatic zonation incorporating the zonal concept, gradient and discriminant analysis in Wasatch Range, northern Utah, USA. Mountainous forest ecosystems were sampled and described by vegetation, physiographic features and soil properties. The Snowpack Telemetry and National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program weather station networks were used to approximate the climate of sample plots. We analysed vegetation and environmental data using clustering, ordination, classification, and ANOVA techniques to reveal environmental gradients affecting a broad vegetation pattern and discriminate these gradients. The specific objective was to assess and classify the response of the complex vegetation to those environmental factors operating at a coarse-scale climatic level. Ordination revealed the dominant role of regional, altitude-based climate in the area. Based on vegetation physiognomy, represented by five tree species, climatic data and taxonomic classification of zonal soils, we identified two vegetation geo-climatic zones:(1) a montane zone, with Rocky Mountain juniper and Douglas-fir; and(2) a subalpine zone, with Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir as climatic climax species. Aspen was excluded from the zonation due to its great ecological amplitude. We found significant differences between the zones in regional climate and landformgeomorphology/soils. Regional climate was represented by elevation, precipitation, and air and soil temperatures; and geomorphology by soil types. This coarse-scale vegetation geo-climatic zonation provides a framework for a comprehensive ecosystem survey, which is missing in the central Rocky Mountains of the United States. The vegetation-geoclimatic zonation represents a conceptual improvement on earlier classifications. This framework explicitly accounts for the influence of the physical environment on the distribution of vegetation within a complex landscape typical of the central Rocky Mountains and in mountain ranges elsewhere.

关 键 词：Ecological classification Ecosystemsurvey Land classification Zonal concept Vegetation zone Vegetation geo-dimatic zone Climate change 

分 类 号：Q948.2[生物学—植物学]