Sensitivity Analysis of Vegetation Diversity to Environmental Change

A model is presented for predicting the global distribution of family diversity in natural terrestrial vegetation. The model assumes that three primary mechanisms determine diversity: the capacity to survive the absolute minimum temperature of a site, the ability to complete the life cycle in a given length and warmth of the growing season, and the capacity to expand leaves in a defined regime of precipitation and vegetation transpiration. The model is tested for present-day vegetation and shows good agreement with observations from local floras. The sensitivity of family diversity to global environmental change has been tested by applying