ABSTRACT
Since the early 1880s, there have been continuing efforts made in different earth surface sciences to classify the world’s environment (Humboldt, 1807; Schouw, 1823; Merriam, 1892; Clements, 1916; Koeppen and Geiger, 1930; Thornthwaite, 1931). Since the categorization of previous systems designed to do this had been coarse and largely inapplicable, Holdridge (1947) devised a new classification system (HLZ). HLZ classification relates to the distribution of major terrestrial ecosystems (termed life zones) to bioclimatic variables. It is a scheme that uses the three bioclimatic variables derived from standard meteorological data to formulate the relation of climate patterns to broad-scale vegetation distribution. It has been widely used to project the impact of climate change on vegetation distribution (Post et al., 1982; Smith et al., 1992; Belotelov et al., 1996; Metternicht and Zinck, 1998; Dixon et al., 1999; Kirilenko et al., 2000; Peng, 2000; Powell et al., 2000; Xu and Yan, 2001; Yue et al., 2001; Yang et al., 2002; Chen et al., 2003, 2005; Chinea and Helmer, 2003; Kerr et al., 2003). The HLZ system has been employed to simulate evolutionary dynamic processes and vegetation patterns (Yue et al., 2005, 2006, 2007a; Feng and Chai, 2008).
