亚高山森林生态系统过程研究进展

Advances in the subalpine forest ecosystem processes

亚高山森林是以冷、云杉属为建群种或优势种的暗针叶林为主体的森林植被。亚高山森林在庇护邻近脆弱生态系统、保育生物多样性、涵养水源、碳吸存和指示全球气候变化等方面具有十分重要且不可替代的作用和地位,其多样化的植被和土壤组合为研究生态系统过程提供了天然的实验室。亚高山森林的群落演替与更新、生物多样性保育、水文生态过程、生物元素的生物地球化学循环以及亚高山森林生态过程对气候变化的响应等研究已取得了明显的进展。但有关全球变化条件下的亚高山森林土壤生物多样性和冬季生态学过程等研究明显不足。全球气候变化背景下的冬季生态学过程、极端灾害事件对亚高山森林生态系统过程的影响、亚高山森林生物多样性的保育机制、亚高山森林土壤生物多样性与生态系统过程的耦合机制等可能是未来研究的前沿科学问题。

Subalpine forest can be defined as representative vegetation dominated by dark coniferous forest with dominant species or constructive species as Abies and Picea.These subalpine ecosystems play important and irreplaceable roles in shielding neighborhood fragile ecosystem,nursing biodiversity,conserving soil and water,sequestering carbon,and indicating global climate change.Furthermore,diverse assemblages of vegetation and soil in the subalpine forest region provide a natural lab for studying ecosystem processes.Consequently,numerous studies have been given to the forest succession and regeneration,forest biodiversity conservation,hydraulic ecological processes,biogeochemical cycling of bioelements,and subalpine forest ecosystem process in response to the climate change in the past 60 years.As yet,more attentions have concerned about the above-ground ecological process in the growing season,little information was available on soil biodiversity and winter ecological processes in the context of the global climate change in the past.In fact,some researches on litter decomposition and soil biodiversity in cold winter have revealed that wintertime ecological process in context of climate change is a critical ecological process.Therefore,the frontier scientific issues in the future are the wintertime ecological processes,effects of extreme disaster on subalpine forest ecological process,conservation mechanisms on biodiversity,and the interactions between soil biodiversity and ecological process in the subalpine forest in the context of global climate change.