Causes for the unimodal pattern of biomass and productivity in alpine grassla…

Abstract Questions: How can we understand the limitations to plant growth at high altitudes? Our aimwas to test the hypotheses that for alpine grasslands along a large altitudinal gradient in semi-arid regions, plant growth is mainly limited by drought at low altitudes but by low temperature at high altitudes, resulting in a unimodal pattern of biomass and productivity associated with an opti…