Vegetation - Global Vegetation Patterns and Determinants

Global Vegetation Patterns and Determinants

At regional and global scales there is predictability of certain vegetation characteristics, especially physiognomic ones, which are related to the predictability in certain environmental characteristics. Much of the variation in these global patterns is directly explainable by corresponding patterns of temperature and precipitation (sometimes referred to as the energy and moisture balances). These two factors are highly interactive in their effect on plant growth, and their relationship to each other throughout the year is critical. These patterns can alternate at different times and seasons of the year.

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