The Qinghai-Tibet plateau (QTP) is the largest and highest plateau in the world, and is an important center for biodiversity that houses an array of high-elevation ecosystems. Despite its importance, QTP has faced multiple conservation challenges over the past decades, in particular due to climate changes (e.g. rising temperature, changing precipitation patterns, and an increase in extreme weather) and over exploitation of natural resources by human activities. Despite growing evidence that plant diversity on QTP is shifting under climate change and human activity, the mechanisms behind these responses—especially acclimation and adaptation—remain poorly understood.
To that end, a team of researchers from Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a comprehensive review integrating decades of research on how climate change and anthropogenic pressures has directly and indirectly impact growth, reproduction, phenology, distribution and ecosystem functions of plant diversity on the QTP. The team also identified critical gaps in current knowledge, such as the synergistic effects of multiple stressors on endemic species, and propose a framework for future research and conservation prioritization.
The team recommend that the following areas be further investigated.
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Contact the author: Hang Sun, sunhang@mail.kib.ac.cn
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Plant Diversity
Literature review
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The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau: Climate change, human activity, and plant diversity
Hang Sun, Zihan Jiang, Bo Song and Yang Niu are the Editors and Yazhou Zhang is the junior Editor of Plant Diversity and were not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article. The other authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.