Dissimilarity
Title: Factors determining plant community composition on a gradient of spatial scale
Project leader: George Malanson
Funding: USA National Science Foundation (NSA)
Description: Our primary objective is to determine the patterns of alpine plant distributions at local to continental scales. Our concept is simplified from McGill (2010), a scale gradient of geographic vs environmental control of community: Geographic distance matters at broad scales, climatic difference at mesoscales and habitat difference at fine scales – but what is the gradient between? We will examine whether this pattern holds for communities as determined by plant species and by their traits. We expect that the results will show that scale determines the explanation of plant community variation in different ways for the assemblages of species and assemblages of traits.
Research team: Elizabeth Pansing + European database partners
Project leader: George Malanson
Funding: USA National Science Foundation (NSA)
Description: Our primary objective is to determine the patterns of alpine plant distributions at local to continental scales. Our concept is simplified from McGill (2010), a scale gradient of geographic vs environmental control of community: Geographic distance matters at broad scales, climatic difference at mesoscales and habitat difference at fine scales – but what is the gradient between? We will examine whether this pattern holds for communities as determined by plant species and by their traits. We expect that the results will show that scale determines the explanation of plant community variation in different ways for the assemblages of species and assemblages of traits.
Research team: Elizabeth Pansing + European database partners
