Abstract
Climate change variation on a small scale may alter the underlying processes determining a pattern operating at large scale and vice versa. Plant response to climate change on individual plant levels on a fine scale tends to change population structure, community composition and ecosystem processes and functioning. Therefore, we reviewed the literature on plant response and resilience to climate change in space and time at different scales on the Tibetan Plateau. We report that spatiotemporal variation in temperature and precipitation dynamics drives the vegetation and ecosystem function on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), following the water–energy dynamics hypothesis. Increasing temperature with respect to time increased the net primary productivity (NPP) on most parts of the Tibetan Plateau, but the productivity dynamics on some parts were constrained by 0.3 °C decade−1 rising temperature. Moreover, we report that accelerating studies on plant community assemblage and their contribution to ecosystem functioning may help to identify the community response and resilience to climate extremes. Furthermore, records on species losses help to build the sustainable management plan for the entire Tibetan Plateau. We recommend that incorporating long-term temporal data with multiple factor analyses will be helpful to formulate the appropriate measures for a healthy ecosystem on the Tibetan Plateau.
Highlights
The variation in ecosystem level (NDVI, productivity and phenology) response in the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is due to topography and unique vegetation response to climatic zones, which is attributed to temperature or precipitation dynamics
Ecological studies that incorporate multi-scale ecological organizations are effective in solving the ecological problems of climate change at regional scales that determine the sustainability of the landscape
Our review showed that there has been very little research conducted on multiple scale studies on the TP
Summary
Global air temperature has elevated by 0.74 ◦ C (on average) over the past century, and it is predicted to increase by 1.5 ◦ C by the end of 21st century [1]. The community structure might change in response to climate warming with the addition of novel species or removal of existing species, and species composition and the dominance of the species within the community may fluctuate [11,13]; species composition on the northern part of the Tibetan Plateau is precipitation-dependent [14] This structural change in the community alters the ecosystem functioning (for example, dynamics of nutrient availability, water resources). An understanding of the multiple scale interactions between cross-scale ecological organizations (from individual level to population or community or ecosystem, and from fine scale toward broad scale) helps us to improve our knowledge about the plant species responses to climate extremes (Figure 1). The list of citations and their DOIs are provided in the
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