The response of culturally important plants to experimental warming and clipping in Pakistan Himalayas

Autor: Ahmed Akrem, Zahid Ali, Saira Karimi, Saadia Naseem, Muhammad Ali Nawaz, Hussain Ali, Olivier Dangles
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
0106 biological sciences
Atmospheric Science
Leaves
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Culture
Social Sciences
Plant Science
01 natural sciences
Grazing
Medicinal Plants
Psychology
Pakistan
Biomass
Poa alpina
Climatology
Biomass (ecology)
Multidisciplinary
biology
Ecology
Animal Behavior
Plant Anatomy
Temperature
food and beverages
Eukaryota
Vegetation
Plants
Medicine
Research Article
Ecological Metrics
Science
Climate Change
010603 evolutionary biology
Ecosystems
Plant-Animal Interactions
Ecosystem
Overgrazing
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Clipping (audio)
Behavior
Plant Ecology
Global warming
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Organisms
Biology and Life Sciences
Plant-Herbivore Interactions
biology.organism_classification
Agronomy
Earth Sciences
Environmental science
Zoology
Zdroj: PLoS ONE
PLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 5, p e0237893 (2021)
ISSN: 1932-6203
Popis: The relative effects of climate warming with grazing on medicinally important plants are not fully understood in Hindukush-Himalaya (HKH) region. Therefore, we combined the indigenous knowledge about culturally important therapeutic plants and climate change with experimental warming (open-top chambers) and manual clipping (simulated grazing effect) and compared the relative difference on aboveground biomass and percent cover of plant species at five alpine meadow sites on an elevation gradient (4696 m-3346 m) from 2016–2018. Experimental warming increased biomass and percent cover throughout the experiment. However, the interactive treatment effect (warming x clipping) was significant on biomass but not on percent cover. These responses were taxa specific. Warming induced an increase of 1 ± 0.6% in Bistorta officinalis percent cover while for Poa alpina it was 18.7 ± 4.9%. Contrastingly, clipping had a marginally significant effect in reducing the biomass and cover of all plant species. Clipping treatment reduced vegetation cover & biomass by 2.3% and 6.26%, respectively, but that was not significant due to the high variability among taxa response at different sites. It was found that clipping decreased the effects of warming in interactive plots. Thus, warming may increase the availability of therapeutic plants for indigenous people while overgrazing would have deteriorating effects locally. The findings of this research illustrate that vegetation sensitivity to warming and overgrazing is likely to affect man–environment relationships, and traditional knowledge on a regional scale.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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