Alps and climate

Late Neogene Erosion of the Alps: A Climate Driver?

As with many mountain belts globally, the Alps have seen a large increase in sediment yield in the late Neogene. The hypothesis that this increase results from climate-change impacts on erosion rate over the past ∼5 Ma is testable, given the extensive work completed in the Alps. Sediment budgets, thermochronology-based cooling rates, and estimates of modern rock uplift and erosion in the Wester...

Effects of Climate Change on the Alpine and Nival Vegetation of the Alps

The Alps still comprise the largest natural and semi-natural environments in Central Europe, but even the remotest alpine regions may face drastic changes due to human-induced climate warming. The glaciers of the Alps respond to the ongoing temperature increase of about 1-2°C since the 19th century with a drastic shrinkage. The high mountain vegetation is generally considered to be particularly...

Climate and land-use change during the late Holocene at Lake Ledro (southern Alps, Italy)

This paper investigates the relative influences of climatic and anthropogenic factors in explaining environmental and societal changes in the southern Alps, Italy. We investigate a deep sediment core (LL081) from Lake Ledro (652 m a.s.l.). Environmental changes are reconstructed through multiproxy analysis, that is, pollen-based vegetation and climate reconstruction, magnetic susceptibility (MS...

Breeding upwards when climate is becoming warmer: no bird response in the French Alps

Altitudinal shifts in distribution were investigated in forest breeding birds, along two elevational gradients in the French northern and southern Alps, from counts repeated at exactly the same locations in the 1970s and the 2000s. Significant shifts were reported for eight of 24 species in the northern alpine site (five downwards, three upwards) and for two of the 17 species in the southern si...

Response of fluvial environments in the Swiss Alps to Late Holocene climate changes