Mountain plant diversity in the Anthropocene

Biodiversity patterns along elevation and latitude have attracted much attention from ecologists and biogeographers. Mountains cover about a quarter of all land area on Earth, and contribute disproportionately to terrestrial biodiversity (Körner et al. 2016; Hoorn et al. 2018). Due to complex topography, climate, and geologic history, mountains exhibit striking biodiversity variation along elevational gradients. Inspired by the early works of Alexander van Humboldt and other subsequent studies on elevational gradients, Prof. Zhang and colleagues initiated in 2017 the regional research network Biodiversity along Elevational gradients: Shifts and Transitions (BEST) to monitor long-term biodiversity dynamics of multiple taxa under climate change and land use. By collaborating with over 20 research teams with different backgrounds, the group has set up 16 elevational transects across a large research area in China. In this talk, Prof. Zhang will introduce the project and will present some results based on data collected in the last six years.

Prof. Zhang  is a professor in ecology at the School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences at East China Normal University (ECNU) in the People's Republic of China. He obtained his PhD from the University of Alberta in Canada in 2013, before carrying out postdoc research at the University of Alberta and at Aarhus University in Denmark. In 2016, he started his current position at ECNU in Shanghai. His research interests include long-term forest dynamics, species coexistence, macroecology, biodiversity patterns and dynamics along elevational gradients, and conservation biogeography. He has published over 70 papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Global Change Biology, and others. Currently, he serves as deputy editor-in-chief for the journal Biodiversity Science and as associate editor for both Ecography and Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation.

YouTube video