EXPLORATION OF IMPORTANT ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINANTS OF FLOWERING PHENOLOGY IN THE WESTERN HIMALAYAN FORESTS OF DHIRKOT, AZAD JAMMU AND KASHMIR, PAKISTAN

The flowering phenology of plants is influenced by the unique set of environmental variations, and therefore, elucidation of important driving factors is important. The study area of Dhirkot (western Himalaya, Pakistan) is explored to record the interactions among the flowering phenology of the vascular plants and current climate along the temporal gradient from March-2015 to February-2018. A total of 38 randomly selected representative sites were visited to record the timing of flowering response and compared with mean monthly climatic data. Multivariate classification and ordination tools were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that majority (185 spp; 68%) of plant species passes through thier flowering phase in the month of July. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) results depicted that about 63.7% of the phenological variations were explained by the monthly explanatory climatic variables, and mean minimum temperature, precipitation, wind speed and soil moisture were significantly (p-adj. <0.05) important. Pseudo-canonical correlation of the first three CCA axes was found higher than 0.8 which depicted that the selected variables were important determinants. This study concluded that predicted future temperature increase might alter the phenological responses, and prove to be devastating for valuable plant species of this unique and very delicate western Himalayan ecosystem.