The Productivity of Zonal Terrestrial Plant Communities and the Moisture and Heat Parameters of an Area

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Abstract
Recent data suggest a refinement of the Grigor'yev-Budyko findings on the relationship between heat and moisture parameters and the productivity of plant communities. Grigor'yev and Budyko suggested that productivity reaches a maximum at some optimal value of the dryness index (R/Lr) close to unity, and declines on both sides of the optimum as the value Lr changes (R remaining constant). The present author finds that at high values of R (in excess of 40 kilocalories per square centimeter per year) a decline in the dryness index toward excess moisture (down to the value 0.5) results in significant increase in plant productivity. This means that a dryness index equal or close to unity is not necessarily optimal in all of the earth's thermal belts.