The Qinling Mountains, a biodiversity hotspot in China, are situated in the transitional zone from plateau in the west to plain in the east in terms of topography and from the subtropics in the south-facing slope to the temperate region in the north-facing slope in terms of climate. The vegetation in the Qinling Mountains is characterized by the transformation from low mountain vegetation in the east to plateau vegetation in the west. As a result, the Qinling Mountain range serves as an important geographical demarcation line and the most critical boundary for climate and vegetation distribution in central mainland China, and it is a sensitive region to climate change. 

Climate warming caused by human activities is an indisputable fact, and it has already produced profound influences on forest ecosystems. Tree growth is mainly limited by low temperature in subalpine regions due to the harsh environmental condition which is close to the physiological limit of tree growth. So, climate warming will generate much greater influences on the subalpine forests. Several permanent plots with a total area of 2ha have been established since 2004 in the subalpine regions of the Qinling Mountains by Dr. Haishan Dang, a scientific researcher of Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Using an integrative method in conjunction with dendroecology, community ecology and spatial analysis technique, Dr. Dang has conducted researches on the responses of the subalpine forests in the Qinling Mountains to climate warming in a multi-scale level, i.e., population, community and landscape. These studies revealed that the structure, composition and growth of the subalpine forests had distinct responses to past climate warming, and that the altitudinal distribution of the subalpine fir tended to advance upward. In addition, some of these results have been published in Forest Ecology and Management, Plant Ecology, Canadian Journal of Forest Research.