A pan-Himalayan test of predictions on plant species richness based on primary production and water-energy dynamics

Highlights• The spatial pattern of plant species richness across the Himalaya can be explained by an interaction of water, energy, and their seasonal variation (length of the growing season LGS).• We found that a Water-energy Dynamics (WED) model, which takes into account both kinetic thermal energy and water as drivers of plant species richness, explains spatial variance in plant species richness better than the Net Primary Production (NPP) model estimated by earth observation tool (MODIS), which only considers chemical energy.• By incorporating the seasonal temporal dimension, i.e., LGS (~ photosynthetic active period for the plants) in the WED model, especially for the high-elevation areas, it is possible to improve fits of the WED models.• The seasonal-WED model, which considers water and energy in both the kinetic as well as chemical form as the drivers of plant species richness, provides a more flexible array of regional species richness models, with better statistical fit, than the simple NPP model.