Modeling Plant Functional Traits and Elevation in the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland

• Published in: Proceedings of the International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Methods (MSV) p. 3
• Main Authors: Valles, D, Apple, M E, Dick, J, Andrews, C, Gutiérrez-Girón, A, Pauli, H
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Athens The Steering Committee of The World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Computing (WorldComp) 01.01.2015

Alpine plants are sensitive to climate change and their functional traits influence their abilities to live in specific habitats on mountain slopes. In the Researching Alpine Plant Traits project, the authors collected in-situ data that was used to develop a model of existing plant functional traits along a gradient of elevation and climatic variables on Sgoran Dubh Mor, a summit of the Global Observational Research Initiative in Alpine Environments target region in the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. The MATLAB function polyfit(), for polynomial curve-fitting linear regression and the numerical model approach to the collected trait data were used to obtain representations of species models that corresponded well with the data on existing plant functional trait distribution. This model may be used to predict changes in the distribution of plant functional traits, and possibly species, with climate change in mountainous regions of the Earth.