Plant Adaptation in Mountain Ecosystem
Plant adaptation studies in mountains are important since the environmental conditions change with altitude and are often termed ‘harsh’ at high altitude (HA). This calls for a degree of specialization at structural and functional levels in plants inhabit
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Plant Adaptation in Mountain Ecosystem Sanjay Kumar and Surender Kumar Vats
Abstract Plant adaptation studies in mountains are important since the environmental conditions change with altitude and are often termed ‘harsh’ at high altitude (HA). This calls for a degree of specialization at structural and functional levels in plants inhabiting these locations. Altitudinal gradients thus illustrate the ability as well as limitation of plant species to adapt to environmental changes. HA environment also draws distinction for being most responsive to climate change, though the predicted trends remain the most complex and uncertain. The high climatic and microclimatic variability reported within different mountain ecosystems of the world further adds to this complexity. The issue of plant adaptation to the changing environmental variables with altitude has evoked high research interest, particularly in the context of changing climatic pattern across the globe. Understanding biological responses of HA species to extreme and fluctuating environmental conditions is fundamental to explain species adaptive potential and capacities, in order to predict their future redistribution (e.g. up-migration), changes in phenology and life cycle pattern and changes in secondary metabolites, to say a few. The present chapter draws attention to the basis of plant adaptation, with reference to plant species in western Himalaya, at physiological, morphological, molecular and biochemical (secondary metabolites) levels in context to change in altitude. These studies can predict the targets for further manipulation of genetic makeup of HA species under the climate change scenario in mountains.
10.1 Introduction Plant adaptation studies in mountains are exciting due to large variations in environmental variables, across relatively short altitudinal distances. High altitude (HA) brings substantial changes in numerous environmental parameters such as higher irradiance levels; larger diurnal fluctuations of temperature; at times limited water and nutrient supply; higher velocity of wind; declining partial pressure, mainly of S. Kumar (*) • S.K. Vats Biodiversity Division, CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur 176061, HP, India e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 M.Z. Abdin et al. (eds.), Plant Biotechnology: Principles and Applications, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2961-5_10
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CO2; and short time period for growth and development. Other factors that may influence mountain environment are aspect, topography and canopy cover which can modify specific habitats in terms of soil moisture content, relative humidity, available sunshine and wind velocity within the same elevation. Change in aspect influences available sunshine and precipitation and thus can considerably alter soil temperature and moisture. In the western Himalaya, rainfall was reported to be more than double for windward side of Beas basin in the western Himalaya compared to the leeward side, tho
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