Long-Term Studies of Snow-Vegetation Interactions

Abstract

Relationships among vegetation, wind, snow, and temperature regimes may help predict effects of climate change. This paper presents a hierarchic geographic information system (HGIS) which helps examine links between species distributions at the plot level, at the level of landscape patterns of plant communities, and at the level of regional patterns of greeness. Geographically referencing ecological data, mapping techniques, landscape and regional scale mapping, and linking ground-level observations to remotely sensed information are all discussed. Results include discussion of specific plant species-snow relationships, landscape-level patterns of specific plant communities, regional patterns of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and linking patterns to variations in climate or direct anthropogenic impacts. 50 refs., 12 figs., 3 tabs.