Format: ORAL

Peter Wolff, Svenja Wanke*, Anke Jentsch

University of Bayreuth, Germany * Presenting: svenja.wanke@uni-bayreuth.de

We summarize and synthesize emerging insights from MIREN and GLORIA, including additional analyses on species reshuffling around the treeline ecotone. MIREN: Climate change threatens plant diversity in mountains worldwide. Evidence suggests that plant species respond by changing their elevational ranges. The Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN) systematically quantifies global patterns of native and non-native species distributions along elevation gradients and shifts arising from interactive effects of climate change and human disturbance. GLORIA: Global evidence suggests that species from lower elevations are colonizing habitats on mountain summits at an accelerating pace, with five times faster rates than half a century ago. Repeated in situ surveys in permanent plots showed a widespread transformation of alpine plant community assemblages toward more warmth-demanding and/or less cold-adapted species. Concurrently to widespread increases in overall species richness, high elevation plant species have declined in abundance and frequency. Strongly cold-adapted plant species may directly suffer from warmer and longer growing seasons. We suggest the treeline ecotone to be the critical observational zone for species reshuffling in mountain environments. Although MIREN and GLORIA permanent plots do not match in location, they jointly provide clues on changing alpine plant community dynamics.