a plant distribution shift temperature, drought or past disturbance植物分布转变温度、干旱或过去的干扰.pdfVIP

A Plant Distribution Shift: Temperature, Drought or Past Disturbance? 1 2,3 Dylan W. Schwilk *, Jon E. Keeley 1 Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, United States of America, 2 U.S. Geological Survey, Western Ecological Research Center, Sequoia-Kings Canyon Field Station, Three Rivers, California, United States of America, 3 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California,United States of America Abstract Simple models of plant response to warming climates predict vegetation moving to cooler and/or wetter locations: in mountainous regions shifting upslope. However, species-specific responses to climate change are likely to be much more complex. We re-examined a recently reported vegetation shift in the Santa Rosa Mountains, California, to better understand the mechanisms behind the reported shift of a plant distribution upslope. We focused on five elevational zones near the center of the gradient that captured many of the reported shifts and which are dominated by fire-prone chaparral. Using growth rings, we determined that a major assumption of the previous work was wrong: past fire histories differed among elevations. To examine the potential effect that this difference might have on the reported upward shift, we focused on one species, Ceanothus greggii: a shrub that only recruits post-fire from a soil stored seedbank. For five elevations used in the prior study, we calculated time series of past per-capita mortality rates by counting growth rings on live and dead individuals. We tested three alternative hypotheses explaining the past patterns of mortality: 1) mortality increased over time consistent with climate warming, 2) mortality was correlated with drought indices, and 3)