Generations of plant scientists have been fascinated by alpine plant life - with the exposure of organisms to dramatic climatic gradients over a very short distance. This comprehensive text treats a wide range of topics: alpine climate and soils, plant distribution and the treeline phenomenon, physiological ecology of water-, nutritional- and carbon relations of alpine plants, plant stress and plant development, biomass production, and aspects of human impacts on alpine vegetation. Geographically the book covers all parts of the world including the tropics.This second edition of Alpine Plant Life gives new references, new diagrams, and extensively revised chapters.

Christian Körner was born 1949 in Salzburg, Austria. He studied in Innsbruck, where he received his Ph.D. and lectured until his appointment as Professor of Botany at the University of Basel (Switzerland) in 1989.