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KMID : 0380119990220060363
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Korean Journal of Ecology
1999 Volume.22 No. 6 p.363 ~ p.369
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Global Warming and Alpine Vegetation
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Kong Woo-Seok
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Abstract
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Reconstruction of the past vegetational changes of Korea in connection with climate changes enables to understand the impacts of past and future global warming on alpine vegetation. Despite the early appearance of the cold-tolerant vegetation since the Mesozoic Era, the occurrence of warmth-tolerant vegetation during the Oligocene and Miocene implies that most of alpine and subalpine vegetations have been confined to the alpine and subalpine belts of northern Korean Peninsula. The presence of cold-episodes during the Pleistocene, however, might have caused a general southward and downslope expansions of cold-tolerant alpine and subalpine vegetation. But the climatic warming trend during the Holocene or post-glacial period eventually has isolated cold-tolerant alpine and subalpine vegetation mainly in the northern Korea, but also on scattered high mountains in the southern Korea. The presence of numerous arctic-alpine and alpine plants on the alpine and subalpine belts is mainly due to their relative degree of sensitivity to high summer temperatures. Global warming would cause important changes is species composition and altitudinal distributional pattern. The altitudinal migration of temperate vegetation upward caused by climatic warming would eventually devastate alpine plants.
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