Background and Setting

Abstract

A fundamental tenet of biogeography is that rather close relationships can be seen to exist between climate and the composition and structure of vegetational communities — the species making up the communities (composition) and relative abundance with which each is represented (structure). This has been recognized since at least the days of Humboldt and has been held responsible in part for the global distribution of forest, savanna, prairie, desert, and so on. More recently, climatic adaptations are invoked to explain certain characteristic physiological responses of plant species to temperature and water regimes as maintained in laboratory, greenhouse, and test plot studies.

Roughly speaking, the causes of small-scale short-term phenomena in the biosphere are the subject matter of ecology; and the causes of large-scale long-term phenomena are the subject matter of biogeography.

E.C. Pielou, Ecological Diversity (Wiley Interscience, 1975, p. 112).