4.0 Article

Tree species distribution in Andean forests: influence of regional and local factors

Journal

JOURNAL OF TROPICAL ECOLOGY
Volume 28, Issue -, Pages 83-95

Publisher

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/S0266467411000617

Keywords

canonical ordination; climate; cloud forest; disturbance; dry forest; permanent plots; space; topography

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Funding

  1. US National Science Foundation
  2. Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis
  3. Fundacion ProYungas (Argentina)
  4. Idea Wild

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We identified and quantified regional and local environmental factors and spatial variation associated with tree-species composition across a 2000-m attitudinal gradient of Andean forest in north-western Argentina. A network of 47 1-ha plots was established along the attitudinal gradient within an area of about 25 000 km(2); all trees >= 1.0 cm dbh were identified and measured. Constrained ordinations and variance-partitioning analyses were performed to investigate the determinants of tree-species distribution at the regional scale, across and within forest types (i.e. dry and cloud forests). We marked and measured a total of 22 240 trees belonging to 160 species. Significant environmental factors and spatial location combined accounted for 35% of total variation explained. A high proportion of variation was explained by climatic factors that were spatially structured; after removing the spatial effect, climate explained more variation in species composition across the complete gradient than did local factors. Relative importance of regional and local factors varied with geographic extent. Local factors explained more variation in tree-species composition at the within-forest scale than at the scale of the complete gradient. Our findings support the conceptual model of multi-scale controls on vegetation distribution, where local community composition and abundance result from processes at both regional and local scales.

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