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Tibetan culture and livelihoods depend on native plants for medicine, food, grazing, wood, as well as cash from market sales. The Medicine Mountains (part of the Hengduan Mountains) of the eastern Himalayas, with tremendous plant diversity derived from steep gradients of both elevation and precipitation, have traditionally been an important source of Tibetan medicinal plants. We examine climate change in this area and vegetation patterns influenced by biogeography, precipitation and elevation (NMS and CCA ordinations of GLORIA plots). The Alpine environment has the highest plant diversity and most useful plants and is the most susceptible to climate change with impacts on traditional Tibetan culture and livelihoods—particularly Tibetan medicine and herding.
Premise of the Study: With biodiversity and rates of climate change among the highest, the eastern Himalaya are critical for understanding the interaction of these two variables. However, there is a dearth of longitudinal data sets that address the effects of climate change on the exceptional alpine biodiversity of the Himalaya.<br>Methods: We established permanent alpine vegetation monitoring plots in three mountain chains of the Hengduan Mountains, the easternmost Himalaya, which have warmed 0.03-0.05°C yr<sup>−1</sup> since 1985. Recently, we resampled plots (176 1-m² quadrat plots and 88 sections of 11 summits in three Hengduan mountain chains) to measure changes in vegetation after 7 years.<br>Key Results: Over 7 years, Tibetan alpine vegetation increased in number of species (+8 species/summit; +2.3 species/m²), in frequency (+47.8 plants/m²), and in diversity (+1.6 effective species/m²). Stepwise regressions indicated that warmer temperatures, southerly aspects, and higher elevations were associated with greater increases in these vegetation metrics. Unexpectedly, Himalayan endemic species increased (+1.4 species/m²; +8.5 plants/m²), especially on higher-elevation summits. In contrast, the increase in relative abundance of non-alpine species was greater at lower-elevation summits. Plants used by local Tibetans also increased (+1.3 species/m²; +32 plants/m²).<br>Conclusions: As in other alpine areas, biodiversity is increasing with climate change in the Himalaya. Unlike other areas, endemic species are proliferating at the highest summits and are indicators of change.
Identifying and protecting “keystone structures” is essential to maintain biodiversity in an increasingly human-dominated world. Sacred forests, i.e. natural areas protected by local people for cultural or religious regions, may be keystone structures for forest birds in the Greater Himalayas, but there is limited understanding of their use by bird communities. We surveyed birds and their habitat in and adjacent to six Tibetan sacred forests in northwest Yunnan China, a biodiversity hotspot. Our goal was to understand the ecological and conservation role of these remnant forest patches for forest birds. We found that sacred forests supported a different bird community than the surrounding matrix, and had higher bird species richness at plot, patch, and landscape scales. While we encountered a homogeneous matrix bird community outside the scared forests, the sacred forests themselves exhibited high heterogeneity, and supported at least two distinct bird communities. While bird community composition was primarily driven by the vegetation vertical structure, plots with the largest-diameter trees and native bamboo groves had the highest bird diversity, indicating that protecting forest ecosystems with old-growth characteristics is important for Himalayan forest birds. Finally, we found an increased bird use of the sacred forests and their edges during 2010, a severe drought year in Yunnan, indicating that sacred forests may serve as refuges during extreme weather years. Our results strongly indicate that sacred forests represent an important opportunity for Himalayan bird conservation because they protect a variety of habitat niches and increase bird diversity at multiple spatial scales.