@article{30733680dc074c0f974ba7500a9a7751,
title = "Interaction of climate change, potentially toxic elements (PTEs), and topography on plant diversity and ecosystem functions in a high-altitude mountainous region of the Tibetan Plateau",
abstract = "Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) generated from mining activities have affected ecological diversity and ecosystem functions around the world. Accurately assessing the long-term effects of PTEs is critical to classifying recoverable areas and proposing management strategies. Mining activities that shape geographical patterns of biodiversity in individual regions are increasingly understood, but the complex interactions on broad scales and in changing environments are still unclear. In this study, we developed a series of empirical models that simulate the changes in biodiversity and ecosystem functions in mine-affected regions along elevation gradients (1500–3600 m a.s.l) in the metal-rich Qilian Mountains (∼800 km) on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (China). Our results confirmed the crucial role of PTEs dispersal, topography, and climatic heterogeneity in the diversification of plant community composition. On average, 54% of the changes in ecosystem functions were explained by the interactions among topography, climate, and PTEs. However, merely 30% of the changes were correlated with a single driver. The changes in species composition (explained variables = 94.8%) in the PTE-polluted habitats located in the warm and humid low-elevation deserts and grasslands were greater than those occurring in the dry alpine deserts and grasslands. The ecosystem functions (soil characteristics, nutrient migration, and plant biomass) experienced greater changes in the humid low-elevation grasslands and alpine deserts. Our results suggest that the processes driven by climate or other factors can result in high-altitude PTE-affected habitat facing greater threats.",
keywords = "Altitude gradients, Biodiversity, Ecosystem functions, Potentially toxic elements (PTEs), Tibetan plateau",
author = "Jingzhao Lu and Hongwei Lu and Brusseau, {Mark L.} and Li He and Alessandra Gorlier and Tianci Yao and Peipei Tian and Sansan Feng and Qing Yu and Qianwen Nie and Yiyang Yang and Chuang Yin and Meng Tang and Wei Feng and Yuxuan Xue and Fangping Yin",
note = "Funding Information: We thank the Land and Resources Bureau , Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Qinghai and Gansu Province), and the Qilian Mountain National Park authority for their support, and for granting us access to the Qilian Mountain National Park; as well as all of the companies who allowed us to work and helped to collect data at mine areas of the Qilian Mountains. This work was supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (STEP) (Grant No. 2019QZKK1003 ), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA20040301 ), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41890824 ), and CAS Interdisciplinary Innovation Team-Global Change Hydrology . Funding Information: To assess the effects on biodiversity and ecosystem functions determined by PTE dispersal and interacted by climate and topography, we evaluated the support for seven different hypotheses with linear models within a multimodel inference approach (Lu et al., 2019a). Multimodel inference takes both uncertainty in parameter estimation and uncertainty in model selection into account. In the model, strongly correlated predictors with the same explanatory power reduce support for the multimodel. The seven hypotheses or models we tested were:The large degree of support for the climate-PTEs-topography interaction models across ecosystem functions was robust to different PTE criteria (Note S1, Tables S4 and S5) and allowed us to consider potentially confounding environmental variables that systematically change with elevation (Note S2). As plant species and ecosystem functions may respond more strongly to certain factors related to the ecological risk induced by PTE transport, we tested whether the uncertainty of ecological risk was affecting the prediction of the response variables. Our results showed that most of the models equally supported the prediction of the response variables with or without considering the uncertainty of ecological risks. In addition, we also tested three models incorporating only a subset of the original data, and the results supported the complete three-way interaction models (climate-PTEs-topography) in most cases (explanatory variable = 63% ± 23% (s.d.), P < 0.005; Figs. S4, 5, 6 and Tables S5, 6, 7).We thank the Land and Resources Bureau, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Qinghai and Gansu Province), and the Qilian Mountain National Park authority for their support, and for granting us access to the Qilian Mountain National Park; as well as all of the companies who allowed us to work and helped to collect data at mine areas of the Qilian Mountains. This work was supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (STEP) (Grant No. 2019QZKK1003), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA20040301), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41890824), and CAS Interdisciplinary Innovation Team-Global Change Hydrology. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 Elsevier Ltd",
year = "2021",
month = jul,
doi = "10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.130099",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "275",
journal = "Chemosphere",
issn = "0045-6535",
publisher = "Elsevier Limited",
}