Potential insolation and plant communities through treeline in the Lower Anderson River valley, N.W.T., Canada ...

• Main Author: Kesting, Stephan Fritz
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Subjects: Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0086979; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0086979

The Lower Anderson River Valley was chosen as a study area to investigate the effects of slope, aspect, and insolation on plant community composition and distribution through the treeline ecotone. Seventy-one plant communities were surveyed; abiotic measurements included soil temperature and depth to frozen soil. Soil samples were taken and later analyzed for pH, conductivity, and particle size distribution. TWINSPAN, a divisive clustering algorithm, defined 4 basic community-types for study area: Tundra, Forest, Steppe, and Sparse. Except for Sparse these community-types have quite discrete distributions along a potential insolation gradient. Sparse communitytypes are associated with acidic, high conductivity soils near smoking bituminous shale deposits. Equivalent latitude, a variable expressing potential insolation relative to flat surfaces at given latitudes, explained about 7 times more of the variance in Detrended Correspondence Analysis axis 1 scores than latitude alone. N Canonical Correlation ...