Broad-scale vegetation-environment relationships in Eurasian high-latitude areas

Abstract Question: How is tundra vegetation related to climatic, soil chemical, geological variables and grazing across a very large section of the Eurasian arctic area? We were particularly interested in broad-scale vegetation-environment relationships and how well do the patterns conform to climate-vegetation schemes. Material and Methods: We sampled vegetation in 1132 plots from 16 sites from different parts of the Eurasian tundra. Clustering and ordination techniques were used for analysing compositional patterns. Vegetation-environment relationships were analysed by fitting of environmental vectors and smooth surfaces onto non-metric multidimensional scaling scattergrams. Results: Dominant vegetation differentiation was associated with a complex set of environmental variables. A general trend differentiated cold and continental areas from relatively warm and weakly continental areas, and several soil chemical and physical variables were associated with this broad-scaled differentiation. Especially so...