Abstract
The ongoing climate warming has been reported to affect a broad range of organisms, and mountain ecosystems are considered to be particularly sensitive because they are limited by low temperatures. Meteorological data show an increased temperature for the alpine areas at Dovrefjell, Norway, causing a prolonged growing season and increased temperature sum. As part of the worldwide project Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA), the short-term changes in vascular plant species richness, species composition of lichen and vascular plant communities, and abundance of single species were studied at four summits representing an altitudinal gradient from the low alpine to the high alpine zone. During the period from 2001 to 2008, an increase in species richness at the lowest summit, as well as a change in the composition of vascular plant communities, was found at the two lowest summits. The results also indicate an increase in abundance of some shrubs and graminoids and a decline in the cover of some species of lichens at the lowest summit. These changes are in accordance with climate induced changes reported in other studies, but other causes for the observed vegetation changes, in particular changes in grazing and trampling pressure, cannot be ruled out.
Highlights
Over the past century, the European continent has experienced an increase in average annual surface temperature of 0.8 oC [1], and the average length of the growing season has increased by 10.8 days since the beginning of 1960 [2]
Climate change has already been shown to affect a broad range of organisms [4,5,6], and over the 21st century the annual temperature in Europe is estimated to continue to increase by 0.1–0.4 oC per decade [1]
Mountain ecosystems are considered highly sensitive to climate change because they are limited by low temperatures [7,8,9,10,11], and for the same reason mountain ecosystems can be used as indicators of the impacts of climate change [8]
Summary
The European continent has experienced an increase in average annual surface temperature of 0.8 oC [1], and the average length of the growing season has increased by 10.8 days since the beginning of 1960 [2]. Prolonged growing season and increased temperature will remove some of the environmental limitations and open the areas for invading plants from lower elevations [9,12], and an upward shift in distributions is expected. The summits selected at Dovrefjell are Vesle Armodshøkollen (1,161 m a.s.l., low alpine zone), Veslekolla (1,418 m a.s.l., in the transition between the low alpine and the middle alpine zone), Kolla (1,651 m a.s.l., in the transition between the middle alpine and the high alpine zone) and Storkinn (1,845 m a.s.l., high alpine zone) (Figure 1). Three of the summits are located to the west of the valley These parts of the Dovrefjell area are dominated by old Precambrian bedrock which mainly consist of resistant and often strongly metamorphosed rocks.
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