Data of plant species distribution, traits, and soil in proglacial environments
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
Glaciers are retreating worldwide, exposing new terrain to colonization by plants. Recently-deglaciated terrains have been a subject of ecological studies for a long time, as they represent a unique natural model system for examining the effects of global warming associated with glacier retreat on plant species and the spatio-temporal dynamic of plant communities. However, we still
have a limited understanding of how physical and biotic factors interactively influence species persistence and community dynamics after glacier retreat and glacier extinction. Using hierarchical joint species distribution models, we integrated data on species occurrence at fine spatial scale, spatio-temporal context, environmental conditions, leaf traits and species-to-species associations in plant communities spanning 0 to ca 5,000 years on average after glacier retreat. Our results show that plant diversity initially increases with glacier retreat, but ultimately decreases after glacier extinction. The 22% of plant species nonlinearly respond to
glacier retreat and will locally disappear with glacier extinction. At the local scale, soil carbon enrichment and reduction of physical (topographic) disturbance positively contribute to distribution patterns in 66% of the species, indicating a strong signal of environmental filtering. Furthermore, positive and negative associations among species play a relevant role (up to 34% of
variance) in driving the spatio-temporal dynamic of plant communities. Global warming prompts a shift from facilitation to competition: positive associations prevail among pioneer species, whereas negative associations are relatively more common among late species. This pattern suggests a role of facilitation for enhancing plant diversity in recently-deglaciated terrains and of
competition for decreasing species persistence in late stages. In summary, although plant diversity initially increases with glacier retreat, more than a fourth of plant species are substantially declining and will disappear with glacier extinction. Leveraging community survey data and hierarchical models is valuable for forecasting biodiversity change and mitigating cascading effects of glacier retreat on mountain ecosystems.
Description
Type of resource | software, multimedia |
---|---|
Date created | 2012 - 2020 |
Creators/Contributors
Author | Losapio, Gianalberto | |
---|---|---|
Contributing author | Cerabolini, Bruno EL | |
Contributing author | Caccianiga, Marco |
Subjects
Subject | Biodiversity change |
---|---|
Subject | Community dynamic |
Subject | Competition |
Subject | Facilitation |
Subject | Glacier forelands |
Subject | Global warming |
Subject | Hierarchical modeling |
Subject | Plant networks |
Subject | Primary succession |
Genre | Dataset |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Losapio, Gianalberto and Cerabolini, Bruno EL and Caccianiga, Marco. (2020). Data of plant species distribution, traits, and soil in proglacial environments. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/hp416gs2665
Collection
Stanford Research Data
View other items in this collection in SearchWorksContact information
- Contact
- losapiog@stanford.edu
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...