1. Climate change and extreme events, such as drought, threaten ecosystems worldwide and in particular mountain ecosystems, where species often live at their environmental tolerance limits. In the European Alps, plant communities are also influenced by land-use abandonment leading to woody encroachment of subalpine and alpine grasslands. 2. In this study, we explored how the forest-grassland ec...

Mediterranean mountain grasslands, including the Pyrenees, are highly vulnerable to climate change, due increasing temperatures and heat weaves frequency, among other factors. However, effects of increased on CO2 fluxes in those ecosystems have been barley explored. To address this gap knowledge, we established FLUXPYR-ECOFUN micrometeorological flux network, which included three eddy covarianc...

We monitored microbiological properties in two forest sites over a period of 17 years (1993-2010) within the International Cooperative Programme on Integrated Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Ecosystems (ICP IM). The two study sites were located in South Tyrol in the Italian Alps at altitudes of 1,737 m a.s.l. (subalpine site IT01) and 570 m a.s.l. (submontane site IT02). Soil samples wer...

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE Microbial biomass plays an important role in nutrient transformation and conservation of forest and grassland ecosystems. The objective of this study was to determine the microbial biomass among three vegetation types in subalpine mountain forest soils of Taiwan. METHODS Tatachia is a typical high-altitude subalpine temperate forest ecosystem in Taiwan with an elevation of ...

Preand post-fertilization tree growth in unfertilized and fertilized thinned stands was used to estimate the 7-year radial growth response of operationally fertilized subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa). Despite large stem growth variability in thinned, and thinned and fertilized stands, the 7-year growth increment of fertilized trees was apparently 51–57% larger than the estimated growth that wou...

Natural disturbances have been among the most important driving factors in many ecosystems. Anthropogenic suppression of various disturbances has led to documented changes in ecosystem structure and function. Avalanche disturbances are one of the most important processes in many subalpine ecosystems world-wide and avalanche tracks provide unique habitat for various animal and plant species. Ove...

Human-caused disruptions to seed-dispersal mutualisms increase the extinction risk for both plant and animal species. Large-seeded plants can be particularly vulnerable due to highly specialized dispersal systems and no compensatory regeneration mechanisms. Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), a keystone subalpine species, obligately depends upon the Clark's Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) for ...

Climate change has caused shifts in species' ranges and extinctions of high-latitude and altitude species. Most cold-tolerant evergreen broadleaved woody plants (shortened to cold-evergreens below) are rare species occurring in a few sites in the alpine and subalpine zones in the Korean Peninsula. The aim of this research is to 1) identify climate factors controlling the range of cold-evergreen...

While phenological shifts and migration of isolated species under climate change have already been observed on alpine summits, very few studies have focused on community composition changes in subalpine grasslands. Here we use permanent plots monitored since 1954 and precisely located phytosociological censuses from 1970 to study compositional changes of subalpine grasslands in two distinct reg...