ArticleAnnals of botany2015
Modelling snow cover duration improves predictions of functional and taxonomic diversity for alpine plant communities.
Article in Annals of botany, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Population density influences genetic connectivity in the Canary Islands endemics Viola cheiranthifolia and Viola guaxarensis.Annals of botany · 2026Article
- Biodiversity in mountain soils above the treeline.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Intermediate snowpack melt-out dates guarantee the highest seasonal grasslands greening in the Pyrenees.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Decreasing snow cover alters functional composition and diversity of Arctic tundra.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Alpine species in dynamic insular ecosystems through time: conservation genetics and niche shift estimates of the endemic and vulnerable Viola cheiranthifolia.Annals of botany · 2019Article
- Know your limits? Climate extremes impact the range of Scots pine in unexpected places.Annals of botany · 2015Article
- Plants and climate change: complexities and surprises.Annals of botany · 2015Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsQuantifying relationships between snow cover duration and plant community properties remains an important challenge in alpine ecology. This study develops a method to estimate spatial variation in energy availability in the context of a topographically complex, high-elevation watershed, which was used to test the explanatory power of environmental gradients both with and without snow cover in relation to taxonomic and functional plant diversity.
methodsSnow cover in the French Alps was mapped at 15-m resolution using Landsat imagery for five recent years, and a generalized additive model (GAM) was fitted for each year linking snow to time and topography. Predicted snow cover maps were combined with air temperature and solar radiation data at daily resolution, summed for each year and averaged across years. Equivalent growing season energy gradients were also estimated without accounting for snow cover duration. Relationships were tested between environmental gradients and diversity metrics measured for 100 plots, including species richness, community-weighted mean traits, functional diversity and hyperspectral estimates of canopy chlorophyll content. KEY
resultsAccounting for snow cover in environmental variables consistently led to improved predictive power as well as more ecologically meaningful characterizations of plant diversity. Model parameters differed significantly when fitted with and without snow cover. Filtering solar radiation with snow as compared without led to an average gain in R(2) of 0·26 and reversed slope direction to more intuitive relationships for several diversity metrics.
conclusionsThe results show that in alpine environments high-resolution data on snow cover duration are pivotal for capturing the spatial heterogeneity of both taxonomic and functional diversity. The use of climate variables without consideration of snow cover can lead to erroneous predictions of plant diversity. The results further indicate that studies seeking to predict the response of alpine plant communities to climate change need to consider shifts in both temperature and nival regimes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.