Krishna B. Shrestha

University of Bergen | UiB · Department of Biological Science

Climate change will have a strong influence on vegetation, particularly on the transition zone communities such as the treeline ecotone. The population structure and regeneration dynamics of long-lived treeline species can be utilized as an indicator of climate change and its impacts on forest vegetation. To understand the population dynamics of th...

Himalayan Silver Fir (Abies spectabilis) and Himalayan Birch (Betula utilis) are tree species often found coexisting in sub-alpine forests of the Nepal Himalayas. To assess species-specific growth performances of these species, tree-ring samples were collected from the subalpine forest in the Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve, Nepal. Standard ring width ch...

Climate warming is expected to positively alter upward and poleward treelines which are controlled by low temperature and a short growing season. Despite the importance of treelines as a bioassay of climate change, a global field assessment and posterior forecasting of tree growth at annual scales is lacking. Using annually resolved tree‐ring data...

Questions What will happen to species diversity in a forest when exploitation of the canopy foliage terminates? The foliage of the main canopy tree of a mountain evergreen oak forest was harvested at different intensities prior to a forest survey in 1993 and resampled in 2013 after the harvest of canopy foliage ceased (1995). We predict a decrease...

Stand structure dynamics are considered as major happenings in any forest as a response to environmental changes. However, this important topic is underrepresented in the treeline studies in the Nepal Himalayas. We aimed to investigate site- as well as species-specific changes in morphometric features (basal diameter, crown cover, density, and heig...

Spatial variation in tree-regeneration density is attributed to the specialization of tree species to light availability for germination and growth. Light availability, in turn, varies across the gap-understorey mosaic. Canopy gaps provide an important habitat for the regeneration of tree species that would otherwise be suppressed in the understory...

Studies on tree-growth responses to climatic variations in a subalpine ecoregion of the central Himalaya are limited. The Himalayan silver fir (Abies spectabilis (D. Don) Spach), a dominant tree species in subalpine forest on mesic north-facing slopes, was used to analyse the tree-growth‒climate relationship along an elevational gradient. Tree grow...

The alpine treeline ecotone is an important component of mountain ecosystems of the Nepal Himalaya; it plays a vital role in the livelihood of indigenous people, and provides ecosystem services. However, the region faces a problem of paucity of data on treeline characteristics at the regional and landscape scales. Therefore, we used Remote Sensing...

Global warming is triggering some species to shift towards the poles or higher elevations, but spatial translocation is also influenced by land-use regime or intensity. The Himalayan climate is getting warmer and land use has changed, reducing in intensity in some areas. We estimated the upper species limit (USL) and tree limit of Abies spectabilis...

Tree growth at the treeline ecotone is known to be sensitive to climate variability, and is thus considered a world-wide bio-monitor of climate change. However, our understanding of within-region variation in growth responses through space and time is limited. A dry south-facing slope dominated by Pinus wallichiana and a wet north-facing slope domi...

Aims: We investigated the treeline dynamics of two environmentally contrasting areas in the Nepalese Himalaya to address the following questions: (i) Does the timing of establishment of the current treeline differ between the two study areas, and can area-specific treeline developments be identified? (ii) Do recruitment patterns and height growth i...

Biodiversity changes caused by anthropogenic disturbance through foliage removal (lopping) were studied in Quercus semecarpifolia Sm. (oak) dominated forests in Nepal. We studied the locations of Phulchoki (Kathmandu Valley) and Ghorepani (Annapurna Region). Alpha (α) diversity, gamma (γ) diversity and different estimates of beta (β) diversity of v...

Changes in species composition and richness across the sub-alpine forest ecotone are well known phenomena. The total number of species at a regional scale drops substantially above the forest-line in the central Himalayas of Nepal. This study tests the effect of a forest border ecotone on a local scale using a grain size of 100m2. We sampled a set...

DOI: 10.3126/banko.v19i2.2984 Banko Janakari, Vol. 19, No.2 2009 pp.42-43