Alpine Plant Life

16Generations of plant scientists have been fascinated by alpine plant life - with the exposure of organisms to dramatic climatic gradients over a very short distance. This comprehensive text treats a wide range of topics: alpine climate and soils, plant distribution and the treeline phenomenon, physiological ecology of water-, nutritional- and carbon relations of alpine plants, plant stress and plant development, biomass production, aspects of reproductive biology, and human impacts on alpine vegetation. Geographically the book covers all parts of the world including the tropics.This new edition of Alpine Plant Life has been fully updated. It now includes over a hundred new references, new diagrams, revised and extended chapters, and a geographic index.04Plant ecology at high elevations.- The alpine life zone.- Alpine climate.- The climate plants experience.- Life under snow: protection and limitation.- Alpine soils.- Alpine treelines.- Climatic stress.- Water relations.- Mineral nutrition.- Uptake and loss of carbon.- Carbon investments.- Growth dynamics and phenology.- Cell division and tissue formation.- Plant biomass production.- Plant reproduction.- Global change at high elevation.- References (with chapter annotation).- Index.- Color Plates.13Aus den Rezensionen zur 2. Auflage: ... Eine Vielzahl aussagekräftiger Graphiken veranschaulicht die besprochenen Phänomene, Prozesse und Faktoren. Zahlreiche Tabellen fassen die Ergebnisse umfangreicher Recherchen zusammen. Das Werk ist zwar äußerst informationsreich, dabei aber übersichtlich und didaktisch geschickt und logisch aufgebaut. ... In der ... vorliegenden Neuauflage wurden über 100 neue Literaturzitate aufgenommen ... Neue Graphiken ... stellen interessante Ergänzungen dar. Hilfreich für den ... Leser ist der neue Geographie-Index ... (in: Biologie in unserer Zeit, September/2004, Vol. 34, Issue 5, S. 334)02Christian Körner was born in 1949 in Salzburg, Austria, got his academic degrees from the University of Innsbruck, and became professor of botany at the University of Basel, Switzerland in 1989. He published over 300 scientific articles on plant-environment interactions and authored and coauthored numerous scientific books, including the leading plant science textbook Strasburger.