Anthropogenic disturbances and their impact on vegetation in Western Himalaya,India

The present study assesses anthropogenic disturbances and their impacts on the vegetation in Western Himalaya,India on the basis of various disturbance parameters such as density,Total Basal Cover(TBC) of cut stumps,lopping percentage and grazing intensities.On the basis of canopy cover and frequency of disturbances(%),the studied forests were divided into highly disturbed(HD),moderately disturbed(MD) and least disturbed(LD) categories.The HD forests had the lowest canopy cover,lowest density and lowest TBC and the LD had the highest canopy cover,highest density and highest TBC.The MD forests occupied the intermediate position with respect to these parameters.Species richness was least in HD forests,highest in one of the MD forests while LD forest occupied an intermediate position.The percentage of regenerating species was lowest(54%) in HD and highest(72%) in MD.The density of seedlings and saplings was higher in one of the MD forests as compared to HD and LD.We concluded that the moderate disturbances do not affect the vegetation adversely;however the increased degree of disturbance causes loss in plant diversity;affects regeneration and changes community characteristics.Construction of hydroelectric projects at various places in the study area was found to be one of the most important sources of anthropogenic disturbances in addition to the routine anthropogenic disturbances like grazing,fuelwood collection and fodder extraction.If all proposed dams in the Indian Himalaya are constructed combined with weak national environmental impact assessment and implementation,it will result in a significant loss of species.Therefore,various agents of disturbances should be evaluated in cumulative manner and any developmental activities such as hydropower projects,which trigger various natural and anthropogenic disturbances,should be combined with proper cumulative environmental impact assessment and effective implementation to minimise the anticipated loss of vegetation.

Warming and grazing enhance litter decomposition and nutrient release independent of litter quality in an alpine meadow

Warming and grazing,and ltter quality jointly determine liter decomposition and nutrient releases in grazing ecosystems.However,their effects have previously been studied in isolation.We conducted a two factorial experiment with asymmetric warming using infrared heaters and moderate grazing in an alpine meadow.Litter samples were collected from all plots in each treatment,among which some subsamples were placed in their original plots and other samples were translocated to other treatment plots to test the relative effects of each treatment on litter decomposition and nutrient releases.We found that warming rather than grazing alone significantly increased total losses of litter mass,total organic carbon,total nitrogen(TN)and total phosphorus(TP)per unit area due to increases in both mass loss rates and ltter biomass.However,grazing with warming did not affect their total mass losses because increased mass loss was offset by decreased litter biomass compared with the control.Seasonal mean soil temperature better predicted litter decomposition than litter lignin content or carbon to nitrogen ratio.There were interactions between warming and grazing,but there were no interactions between them and litter quality on litter decomposition.The temperature sensitivity of TN loss was higher than that of TP loss per unit area.Our results suggest that increased temperature has a greater effect on litter decomposition and nutrient release than change in litter quality,and that more N release from litter could result in greater P deficiency in the alpine meadow.