Response of specific leaf area to a large-scale environmental gradient in five forest types in China

DOI

10.2991/itms-15.2015.372How to use a DOI?

Keywords

altitude; environmental change; precipitation; phenotypic plasticity; SLA; temperature.

Abstract

Understanding the response of plant traits to environmental change is critical. Specific leaf area (SLA) is an important plant functional trait, correlating with environmental conditions and indicating certain ecophysiological traits. Although the SLA-environment relationship has been extensively studied, SLA response at the regional scale is limited. In order to study how SLA changes with environment at the regional scale, SLA and abiotic data were collected from five forest types distributed across 746 sites. These data were collected from studies examining the effect on SLA to temperature, precipitation and altitudinal variation. The mean SLA was 149±18, 100±7, 151±17, 154±22 and 113±25 cm2 g-1 in Boreal/temperate Larix forest (TLF), boreal/alpine Picea-Abies forest (APAF), temperate/subtropical montane Populus-Betula deciduous forest (MPBF), temperate deciduous broadleaf forest (TDBF) and subtropical evergreen broadleaf forest (SEBF), respectively. With increasing mean annual temperature (MAT), SLA increased significantly in TLF and SEBF, but decreased significantly in APAF and MPBF. As mean annual precipitation (MAP) increased, SLA significantly increased in TLF and significantly decreased in TDBF. A significant negative correlation occurred between SLA and altitude in APAF, TDBF and SEBF. These results indicated that SLA may predict tree response to environmental change in some forest types.

Copyright

© 2015, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shiming Zhu
AU  - Xiaoli Hou
AU  - Li Xue
PY  - 2015/11
DA  - 2015/11
TI  - Response of specific leaf area to a large-scale environmental gradient in five forest types in China
BT  - Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Industrial Technology and Management Science
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1527
EP  - 1531
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/itms-15.2015.372
DO  - 10.2991/itms-15.2015.372
ID  - Zhu2015/11
ER  -