(Download) "Bioclimate-Vegetation Interrelations in Northwestern Mexico (Report)" by Manuel Macias, Miguel A. Aguirre, Juan L. Rodriguez, Jose Delgadillo Peinado " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Bioclimate-Vegetation Interrelations in Northwestern Mexico (Report)
- Author : Manuel Macias, Miguel A. Aguirre, Juan L. Rodriguez, Jose Delgadillo Peinado
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Life Sciences,Books,Science & Nature,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 114 KB
Description
As the primary independent factor of the environment, climate generally is employed as the principal basis for classification of vegetation. Since the times of Humboldt and following pioneer conceptual works (e.g., Merriam, 1898; Dokuchaev, 1899), most efforts to divide the world into life zones and ecological regions have been based primarily on distribution of climate-vegetation zones. The area of plant ecology that relates structure and distribution of vegetation (including seasonal variations) to climatic variation is bioclimatology. Bioclimatic classification schemes attempt to determine relationships between average values of air temperature and precipitation and geographic distribution of living organisms, mainly individual species or communities of plants (Muller, 1982; Walter, 1985). World zones showing marked climatic gradients can be the best laboratory to assess whether distribution of vegetation follows a climatic pattern, as reflected by meteorological data. Of particular ecological and bioclimatic interest is the strip of western continental Mexico along the Gulf of California and Pacific Ocean, crossing the states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, and Colima. In a north-south direction, this region crosses the transition from the most arid deserts of North America to tropical forests (Wiseman, 1980), and it is here that tropical deciduous forests reach their northern distributional limit in the Western Hemisphere (Reichenbacher et al., 1998; Van Devender et al., 2000). The flora and vegetation of this region have not been examined in detail (Martinez-Yrizar et al., 2000; Rzedowski, 2006). Extensive botanical surveys have been conducted only in the Rio Mayo Basin (Gentry, 1942; Yetman et al., 1995; Martin et al., 1998; Van Devender et al., 2000); most work at the ecosystem level has been conducted at the Estacion de Biologia Chamela in Jalisco (Martinez-Yrizar et al., 2000).