Aims Climate change in the near future may become a major threat to high-altitude
endemics by greatly altering their distribution. Our aims are to (i) assess the potential …

While there is a general understanding of broadscale patterns of the region of the Qinghai-
Tibet Plateau (QTP)'s biodiversity, this is largely reliant upon knowledge of species richness …

Plants that share the same habitat often exhibit similar biological traits. As climatic conditions
change with increasing elevation, biological traits are expected to vary among plant species …

The Yuanjiang dry-hot valley features hot and dry climate, low vegetation and soil
degradation. It had lush vegetation in the past, but has become degraded in recent decades …

Understanding how geographical patterns of plant richness are established is a key
scientific question in ecology and biogeography. Climate factors, such as environmental …

Desertification poses an important ecological problem in Northwest China as desert
ecosystems are highly vulnerable to climatic and land-use changes. Due to the harsh …

Lycophytes and ferns are the oldest terrestrial vascular plants, sensitive to climate change,
and can act as an indicator of environmental change in the forest. However, knowledge …

Fourteen plots were chosen along with the altitude of 1600–2600 m in Guandi Mountain,
Shanxi Province, China to investigate all the trees in the plots, and the species diversity …

Leaf size varies conspicuously within and among species under different environments.
However, it is unclear how leaf size would change with elevation, whether there is a general …

Abstract Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis and the related Principal
Components (PC) analysis are used to extract valuable vegetation cover derived information …