• In the Alpine, water rarely becomes a primary limiting resource, because of the increased precipitation/evapotranspiration ratio and plant adaptation.

• Soils are the key: only on very shallow soils there is the risk of periodic water shortage.

• Habitats prone to periodic water shortage are inhabited by specialists such as desiccation tolerant plants (most cryptogams) or by succulents.

• One need to distinguish between surface drought-induced nutrient shortage (which can occur) and true tissue water shortage in plants (which rarely occurs because of deep roots).

Part of this unit has been extracted from Körner Ch (1999) Alpine Plant Life: functional plant ecology of high mountain ecosystems. Springer, Berlin, chapter 9

Christian Körner, Thomas Zumbrunn

29 August 2011
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