Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of
mountains. The
alpine climate
Alpine climate is the typical weather (climate) for elevations above the tree line, where trees fail to grow due to cold. This climate is also referred to as a mountain climate or highland climate.
Definition
There are multiple definitions of ...
in these regions strongly affects the
ecosystem because temperatures
fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucial factor in shaping plant community, biodiversity, metabolic processes and ecosystem dynamics for montane ecosystems. Dense montane
forests are common at moderate elevations, due to moderate temperatures and high rainfall. At higher elevations, the climate is harsher, with lower temperatures and higher winds, preventing the growth of trees and causing the plant community to transition to
montane grasslands, shrublands or
alpine tundra
Alpine tundra is a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees because it is at high elevation, with an associated harsh climate. As the latitude of a location approaches the poles, the threshold elevation for alpine tundra gets ...
. Due to the unique climate conditions of montane ecosystems, they contain increased numbers of endemic species. Montane ecosystems also exhibit variation in
ecosystem service
Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystem, grassland ecosystems, and aquatic ecosystems. ...
s, which include carbon storage and water supply.
Life zones
As elevation increases, the
climate becomes cooler, due to a decrease in
atmospheric pressure
Atmospheric pressure, also known as barometric pressure (after the barometer), is the pressure within the atmosphere of Earth. The standard atmosphere (symbol: atm) is a unit of pressure defined as , which is equivalent to 1013.25 millibars, ...
and the
adiabatic cooling
In thermodynamics, an adiabatic process (Greek: ''adiábatos'', "impassable") is a type of thermodynamic process that occurs without transferring heat or mass between the thermodynamic system and its environment. Unlike an isothermal proces ...
of airmasses.
The change in climate by moving up 100 meters on a mountain is roughly equivalent to moving 80 kilometers (45 miles or 0.75° of
latitude
In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north–south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pole ...
) towards the nearest pole. The characteristic flora and fauna in the mountains tend to strongly depend on elevation, because of the change in climate. This dependency causes
life zone
The life zone concept was developed by C. Hart Merriam in 1889 as a means of describing areas with similar plant and animal communities. Merriam observed that the changes in these communities with an increase in latitude at a constant elevation a ...
s to form: bands of similar ecosystems at similar altitude.
One of the typical life zones on mountains is the montane forest: at moderate elevations, the rainfall and temperate climate encourages dense forests to grow.
Holdridge defines the climate of montane forest as having a biotemperature of between , where biotemperature is the mean temperature considering temperatures below to be .
Above the elevation of the montane forest, the trees thin out in the subalpine zone, become twisted
krummholz, and eventually fail to grow. Therefore, montane forests often contain trees with twisted trunks. This phenomenon is observed due to the increase in the wind strength with the elevation. The elevation where trees fail to grow is called the
tree line. The biotemperature of the subalpine zone is between .
[
Above the tree line the ecosystem is called the alpine zone or ]alpine tundra
Alpine tundra is a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees because it is at high elevation, with an associated harsh climate. As the latitude of a location approaches the poles, the threshold elevation for alpine tundra gets ...
, dominated by grasses and low-growing shrubs. The biotemperature of the alpine zone is between . Many different plant species live in the alpine environment, including perennial grass
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also widel ...
es, sedges, forbs, cushion plant
A cushion plant is a compact, low-growing, mat-forming plant that is found in alpine, subalpine, arctic, or subarctic environments around the world. The term "cushion" is usually applied to woody plants that grow as spreading mats, are limited i ...
s, mosses, and lichens. Alpine plants must adapt to the harsh conditions of the alpine environment, which include low temperatures, dryness, ultraviolet radiation, and a short growing season. Alpine plants display adaptations such as rosette structures, waxy surfaces, and hairy leaves. Because of the common characteristics of these zones, the World Wildlife Fund groups a set of related ecoregions
An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of ...
into the " montane grassland and shrubland" biome. A region in the Hengduan Mountains adjoining Asia's Tibetan Plateau have been identified as the world's oldest continuous alpine ecosystem with a community of 3000 plant species, some of them continuously co-existing for 30 million years.
Climates with biotemperatures below tend to consist purely of rock and ice.[
]
Montane forests
Montane forests occur between the submontane zone and the subalpine zone. The elevation at which one habitat changes to another varies across the globe, particularly by latitude
In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north–south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pole ...
. The upper limit of montane forests, the tree line, is often marked by a change to hardier species that occur in less dense stands.[ For example, in the ]Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...
of California, the montane forest has dense stands of lodgepole pine
''Pinus contorta'', with the common names lodgepole pine and shore pine, and also known as twisted pine, and contorta pine, is a common tree in western North America. It is common near the ocean shore and in dry montane forests to the subalpine ...
and red fir
''Abies magnifica'', the red fir or silvertip fir, is a western North American fir, native to the mountains of southwest Oregon and California in the United States. It is a high-elevation tree, typically occurring at elevation, though only rarel ...
, while the Sierra Nevada subalpine zone
The Sierra Nevada subalpine zone refers to a biotic zone below treeline in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, United States. This subalpine zone is positioned between the upper montane zone (such as red fir forest) at its lower lim ...
contains sparse stands of whitebark pine
''Pinus albicaulis'', known by the common names whitebark pine, white bark pine, white pine, pitch pine, scrub pine, and creeping pine, is a conifer tree native to the mountains of the western United States and Canada, specifically subalpine ...
.
The lower bound of the montane zone may be a "lower timberline" that separates the montane forest from drier steppe or desert region.
Montane forests differ from lowland forests in the same area. The climate of montane forests is colder than lowland climate at the same latitude, so the montane forests often have species typical of higher-latitude lowland forests. Humans can disturb montane forests through forestry and agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
.[ On isolated mountains, montane forests surrounded by treeless dry regions are typical "]sky island
Sky islands are isolated mountains surrounded by radically different lowland environments. The term originally referred to those found on the Mexican Plateau, and has extended to similarly isolated high-elevation forests. The isolation has s ...
" ecosystems.
Temperate climate
Montane forests in temperate climate are typically one of temperate coniferous forest or temperate broadleaf and mixed forest, forest types that are well known from Europe and northeastern North America. The trees are, however, often not identical to those found further north: geology and climate causes different related species to occur in montane forests.
Montane forests outside Europe tend to be more species-rich, because the major mountain chains of Europe are oriented east–west.
Montane forests in temperate climate occur in Europe (the Alps
The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...
, Carpathians
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at and the Scandinavian Mountains at . The range stretches ...
, Caucasus and more
More or Mores may refer to:
Computing
* MORE (application), outline software for Mac OS
* more (command), a shell command
* MORE protocol, a routing protocol
* Missouri Research and Education Network
Music Albums
* ''More!'' (album), by Booka ...
), in North America (Cascade Range
The Cascade Range or Cascades is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern California. It includes both non-volcanic mountains, such as the North Cascades, ...
, Klamath-Siskiyou, Appalachians
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...
and more), south-western South America, New Zealand and the Himalayas.
Climate change is predicted to affect temperate montane forests. For example, in the Pacific Northwest of North America, climate change may cause "potential reduced snowpack, higher levels of evapotranspiration, increased summer drought" which will negatively affect montane wetlands.
Mediterranean climate
Montane forests in Mediterranean climate are warm and dry except in winter, when they are relatively wet and mild. Montane forests located in Mediterranean climates exhibit towering trees alongside high biomass. These forests are typically mixed conifer and broadleaf forests, with only a few conifer species. Pine and juniper
Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' () of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from the Arcti ...
are typical trees found in Mediterranean montane forests. The broadleaf trees show more variety and are often evergreen, e.g. evergreen oak
Live oak or evergreen oak is any of a number of oaks in several different sections of the genus ''Quercus'' that share the characteristic of evergreen foliage. These oaks are not more closely related to each other than they are to other oaks.
...
.
This type of forest is found in the Mediterranean Basin, North Africa, Mexico and the southwestern US
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, N ...
, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
.
Subtropical and tropical climate
In the tropics, montane forests can consist of broadleaf forest
A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...
in addition to coniferous forest
Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All exta ...
. One example of a tropical montane forest is a cloud forest
A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level clou ...
, which gains its moisture from clouds and fog. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and vegetation, in which case they are also referred to as mossy forests. Mossy forests usually develop on the saddles of mountains, where moisture introduced by settling clouds is more effectively retained. Depending on latitude, the lower limit of montane rainforests on large mountains is generally between while the upper limit is usually from .
Tropical montane forests might exhibit high sensitivity to climate change. Climate change may cause variation in temperature, precipitation and humidity, which will cause stress on tropical montane forests. The predicted upcoming impacts of climate change might significantly affect biodiversity loss
Biodiversity loss includes the worldwide extinction of different species, as well as the local reduction or loss of species in a certain habitat, resulting in a loss of biological diversity. The latter phenomenon can be temporary or permanent, de ...
and might result in change of species range and community dynamics. Global climate model
A general circulation model (GCM) is a type of climate model. It employs a mathematical model of the general circulation of a planetary atmosphere or ocean. It uses the Navier–Stokes equations on a rotating sphere with thermodynamic terms f ...
s predict reduced cloudiness in the future. Reduction in cloudiness may already be affecting the Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica.
Subalpine zone
The subalpine zone is the biotic zone
The life zone concept was developed by C. Hart Merriam in 1889 as a means of describing areas with similar plant and animal communities. Merriam observed that the changes in these communities with an increase in latitude at a constant elevation a ...
immediately below the tree line around the world. In tropical regions of Southeast Asia the tree line may be above , whereas in Scotland it may be as low as . Species that occur in this zone depend on the location of the zone on the Earth, for example, Pinus mugo
''Pinus mugo'', known as bog pine, creeping pine, dwarf mountain pine, mugo pine, mountain pine, scrub mountain pine, or Swiss mountain pine, is a species of conifer, native to high elevation habitats from southwestern to Central Europe and Sou ...
(scrub mountain pine) in Europe, snow gum
''Eucalyptus pauciflora'', commonly known as snow gum, cabbage gum or white sally, is a species of tree or mallee that is native to eastern Australia. It has smooth bark, lance-shaped to elliptical leaves, flower buds in clusters of between sev ...
in Australia, or subalpine larch
''Larix lyallii'', the subalpine larch, or simply alpine larch, is a deciduous, coniferous tree native to northwestern North America. It lives at high altitudes, from , in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Montana, British Columbia, and Alberta. Ther ...
, mountain hemlock
''Tsuga mertensiana'', known as mountain hemlock, is a species of hemlock native to the west coast of North America, found between Southcentral Alaska and south-central California.
Description
''Tsuga mertensiana'' is a large evergreen conifer ...
and subalpine fir
''Abies lasiocarpa'', the subalpine fir or Rocky Mountain fir, is a western North American fir tree.
Description
''Abies lasiocarpa'' is a medium-sized evergreen conifer with a very narrow conic crown, growing to tall, exceptionally , with a t ...
in western North America.
Trees in the subalpine zone often become krummholz, that is, crooked wood, stunted and twisted in form. At tree line, tree seedlings may germinate on the lee side
Windward () and leeward () are terms used to describe the direction of the wind. Windward is ''upwind'' from the point of reference, i.e. towards the direction from which the wind is coming; leeward is ''downwind'' from the point of reference ...
of rocks and grow only as high as the rock provides wind protection. Further growth is more horizontal than vertical, and additional rooting may occur where branches contact the soil. Snow cover may protect krummholz trees during the winter, but branches higher than wind-shelters or snow cover are usually destroyed. Well-established krummholz trees may be several hundred to a thousand years old.
Meadows
A meadow ( ) is an open habitat, or field, vegetated by grasses, herbs, and other non-woody plants. Trees or shrubs may sparsely populate meadows, as long as these areas maintain an open character. Meadows may be naturally occurring or artifici ...
may be found in the subalpine zone. Tuolumne Meadows in the Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...
of California, is an example of a subalpine meadow.
Example subalpine zones around the world include the French Prealps
The French Prealps (french: Préalpes) are a group of subalpine mountain ranges of medium elevation located immediately west of the French Alps. They roughly stretch from Lake Geneva southwest to the rivers Isère and Drôme; east to a line ru ...
in Europe, the Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...
and Rocky Mountain
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...
subalpine zones in North America, and subalpine forests in the eastern Himalaya, western Himalaya
The Western Himalayas refers to the western half of the Himalayas, in northern Pakistan and northwestern India. It is also known as the Punjab Himalayas. Four of the five tributaries of the Indus River in Punjab ( Beas, Chenab, Jhelum, and Ravi) ...
, and Hengduan mountains of Asia.
Alpine grasslands and tundra
Alpine grasslands and tundra lie above the tree line, in a world of intense radiation, wind, cold, snow, and ice. As a consequence, alpine vegetation is close to the ground and consists mainly of perennial grass
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also widel ...
es, sedges, and forbs. Annual plants are rare in this ecosystem and usually are only a few inches tall, with weak root systems. Other common plant life-form
Plant life-form schemes constitute a way of classifying plants alternatively to the ordinary species-genus-family scientific classification. In colloquial speech, plants may be classified as trees, shrubs, herbs (forbs and graminoids), etc. The s ...
s include prostrate shrub
A prostrate shrub is a woody plant, most of the branches of which lie upon or just above the ground, rather than being held erect as are the branches of most trees and shrubs.
Background
Prostration may occur because the supporting tissues in ste ...
s; tussock-forming graminoids; and cryptogam
A cryptogam (scientific name Cryptogamae) is a plant (in the wide sense of the word) or a plant-like organism that reproduces by spores, without flowers or seeds. The name ''Cryptogamae'' () means "hidden reproduction", referring to the fact ...
s, such as bryophytes
The Bryophyta s.l. are a proposed taxonomic division containing three groups of non-vascular land plants (embryophytes): the liverworts, hornworts and mosses. Bryophyta s.s. consists of the mosses only. They are characteristically limited in si ...
and lichens
A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.[Cushion plant
A cushion plant is a compact, low-growing, mat-forming plant that is found in alpine, subalpine, arctic, or subarctic environments around the world. The term "cushion" is usually applied to woody plants that grow as spreading mats, are limited i ...]
s, looking like ground-hugging clumps of moss, escape the strong winds blowing a few inches above them. Many flowering plants of the alpine tundra have dense hairs on stems and leaves to provide wind protection or red-colored pigments capable of converting the sun's light rays into heat. Some plants take two or more years to form flower buds, which survive the winter below the surface and then open and produce fruit with seeds in the few weeks of summer. Non-flowering lichens cling to rocks and soil. Their enclosed algal cells can photosynthesize
Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that, through cellular respiration, can later be released to fuel the organism's activities. Some of this chemical energy is stored in ...
at any temperature above , and the outer fungal layers can absorb more than their own weight in water.
The adaptations for survival of drying winds and cold may make tundra vegetation seem very hardy, but in some respects the tundra is very fragile. Repeated footsteps often destroy tundra plants, leaving exposed soil to blow away, and recovery may take hundreds of years.[
Alpine meadows form where sediments from the weathering of rocks has produced soils well-developed enough to support grasses and sedges. Alpine grasslands are common enough around the world to be categorized as a ]biome
A biome () is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader ...
by the World Wildlife Fund. The biome, called "Montane grasslands and shrublands", often evolved as virtual islands, separated from other montane regions by warmer, lower elevation regions, and are frequently home to many distinctive and endemic plants which evolved in response to the cool, wet climate
Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...
and abundant sunlight.
The most extensive montane grasslands and shrublands occur in the Neotropical páramo
Páramo () can refer to a variety of alpine tundra ecosystems located in the Andes Mountain Range, South America. Some ecologists describe the páramo broadly as "all high, tropical, montane vegetation above the continuous timberline". A narrower ...
of the Andes Mountains
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...
. This biome also occurs in the mountains of east and central Africa
Central Africa is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries according to different definitions. Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, ...
, Mount Kinabalu
Mount Kinabalu ( ms, Gunung Kinabalu, Dusun: ''Gayo Ngaran or Nulu Nabalu'') is the highest mountain in Borneo and Malaysia. With an elevation of , it is third-highest peak of an island on Earth, and 20th most prominent mountain in the wor ...
of Borneo
Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and ea ...
, highest elevations of the Western Ghats in South India and the Central Highlands of New Guinea. A unique feature of many wet tropical montane regions is the presence of giant rosette plants from a variety of plant families, such as ''Lobelia
''Lobelia'' () is a genus of flowering plants comprising 415 species, with a subcosmopolitan distribution primarily in tropical to warm temperate regions of the world, a few species extending into cooler temperate regions.Huxley, A., ed. (1992 ...
'' (Afrotropic
The Afrotropical realm is one of Earth's eight biogeographic realms. It includes Africa south of the Sahara Desert, the majority of the Arabian Peninsula, the island of Madagascar, southern Iran and extreme southwestern Pakistan, and the island ...
), ''Puya Puya may refer to:
* ''Puya'' (plant), in the family Bromeliaceae
* Puya (river), in Russia
* Puya, a variety of Guajillo chili
* ''Puya'' (Meitei texts), traditional or mythological texts of the Meetei people
* '' Culoepuya'' or ''Culo'e Puya'' ...
'' ( Neotropic), '' Cyathea'' ( New Guinea), and ''Argyroxiphium
''Argyroxiphium'' is a small genus of plants in the family Asteraceae. Its members are known by the common names silversword or greensword due to their long, narrow leaves and the silvery hairs on some species. The silverswords belong to a larger ...
'' ( Hawaii).
Where conditions are drier, one finds montane grasslands, savannas, and woodlands, like the Ethiopian Highlands
The Ethiopian Highlands is a rugged mass of mountains in Ethiopia in Northeast Africa. It forms the largest continuous area of its elevation in the continent, with little of its surface falling below , while the summits reach heights of up to . ...
, and montane steppes, like the steppes of the Tibetan Plateau.
See also
* Forest ecology
Forest ecology is the scientific study of the interrelated patterns, processes, flora, fauna and ecosystems in forests. The management of forests is known as forestry, silviculture, and forest management. A forest ecosystem is a natural wood ...
* Tree line
* Temperate coniferous forests
* Ecology of the Rocky Mountains
The ecology of the Rocky Mountains is diverse due to the effects of a variety of environmental factors. The Rocky Mountains are the major mountain range in western North America, running from the far north of British Columbia in Canada to New Me ...
* Sierra Nevada lower montane forest
The Sierra Nevada lower montane forest is a plant community along a strip along the western and eastern edges of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. This zone is also known as a yellow pine forest.
Moving southward, the elevation ran ...
* East African montane forests
* Afromontane
The Afromontane regions are subregions of the Afrotropical realm, one of the Earth's eight biogeographic realms, covering the plant and animal species found in the mountains of Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula. The Afromontane regions of ...
, a series of high-elevation regions in Africa
* California montane chaparral and woodlands
The California montane chaparral and woodlands is an ecoregion defined by the World Wildlife Fund, spanning of mountains in the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and Coast Ranges of southern and central California. The ecoregion is part o ...
, an ecoregion.
* Angolan montane forest-grassland mosaic
Angolan may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Angola
*Angolan people; see Demographics of Angola
*Angolan culture
*Angolar Creole
*Something of, from, or related to the historical Bantu Kingdom of Ndongo
*A resident of:
**Angola, New ...
, an ecoregion.
* Australian Alps montane grasslands
The Australian Alps montane grasslands is a montane grassland ecoregion of south-eastern Australia, restricted to the montane regions above 1300 metres (the upper altitudinal limit of ''Eucalyptus pauciflora'').
Location and description
Th ...
, an ecoregion.
* South Western Ghats montane rain forests
The South Western Ghats montane rain forests is an ecoregion in South India, covering the southern portion of the Western Ghats in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu at elevations from . Annual rainfall in this ecoregion exceeds .
Setting
The e ...
, an ecoregion
* Polonyna (montane meadow)
* Altitudinal zonation
Altitudinal zonation (or elevational zonation) in mountainous regions describes the natural layering of ecosystems that occurs at distinct elevations due to varying environmental conditions. Temperature, humidity, soil composition, and solar radi ...
* Biome
A biome () is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader ...
References
External links
*
Tree cover map for mountain forests – UNEP Map 2011
{{Subject bar, auto=1, wikt=montane, Mountains, Ecology
Forest ecology