The distribution of Salix species in Fennoscandia - a numerical analysis

This paper aims to detect, describe, and interpret the major distributional patterns of species within the genus Salix in Fennoscandia, and to compare these results with a European-scale analysis of Salix distributional patterns
The occurrences of the 24 native Salix species in the 558.50 km grid squares that comprise Fennoscandia, were recorded on the basis of distnbutional maps in Atlas Florae Europaeae Distnbutional patterns were summarised numencally by means of two-way indicator species analysis and detrended correspondence analysis, and were related numerically to 42 climatic, geographical, topographical, geological, land-use and edaphic variables by means of canonical correspondence analysis The possible importance of the relationships between species distributions and the environment was tested statistically
Regional climate, the most important components being related to summer temperatures, largely accounts for the regional distributional patterns within Salix in Fennoscandia This result agrees with the European-scale results for Salix , and suggests that these two scales may belong to the same domain
The regionalisation based on Salix is similar to earlier phytogeographical regionalisations of Fennoscandia, suggesting that the climatic factors proposed as being important for Salix distributions may also be important for regional vegetation patterns at the scale of Fennoscandia