Non-native vascular flora of alpine areas in the White Mountains, New Hampshire, USA ...

• Main Authors: Sperduto, Daniel D., Nichols, William F., Jones, Michael T.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Taylor & Francis 2023
• Subjects: Sociology; FOS Sociology; Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified; Ecology; FOS Biological sciences; Marine Biology; Computational Biology; Arctic; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24092582; https://tandf.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Non-native_vascular_flora_of_alpine_areas_in_the_White_Mountains_New_Hampshire_USA/24092582

Arctic-alpine vegetation in the eastern United States is unique to northern New England and New York and is disjunct from similar areas in eastern Canada. We present the first study of the non-native flora in the region, specifically focusing on New Hampshire’s White Mountains. By combining literature and herbaria searches, field surveys, and a seventeen-year evaluation at an alpine hut in a hypothesis-driven framework, we document the composition, chronology, and persistence of non-native plant species establishments, regress richness in relation to elevation and disturbed area, and evaluate similarities to nineteen other alpine floras globally. Our results indicate that the White Mountains support one of the most species-rich non-native alpine floras known in the world, with 58 species detected at thirty-one sites since 1874, comprising 19 percent of 300 species documented in New Hampshire’s 22 km 2 of alpine tundra. There is a negative relationship between non-native alpine plant richness and elevation ...