Brigitta Erschbamer

University of Innsbruck | UIBK · Institute of Botany

Climate change in alpine habitats has a direct impact on vascular plant species, and is leading to changes in species abundance and distribution. Alpine plant communities are expected to experience a turnover of species over time, due to the loss of cold-adapted specialists and the upslope migration of more thermophilic taxa. Therefore, assessments...

Climate change and the associated glacier retreat lead to considerable enlargement and alterations of the proglacial systems. The colonisation of plants in this ecosystem was found to be highly dependent on terrain age, initial site conditions and geomorphic disturbances. Although the explanatory variables are generally well understood, there is li...

On a glacier foreland of the Central Austrian Alps, a permanent plot study was performed to investigate the successional pathway on two moraines. We expected that the pioneer stage deglaciated for 25 years will converge to an early successional stage after another 25 years and the early stage deglaciated for 40 years will show trends toward a late...

Climate warming can be regarded as the main factor for changes occurring in alpine ecosystems. As high elevation species in the Alps are considered to be particularly sensitive to climate change, long term monitoring projects are important to determine amount and direction of biodiversity changes. This study extended the monitoring of the GLORIA si...

Climate change and the associated glacier retreat lead to considerable enlargement and alterations of the proglacial systems. The colonisation of plants in this ecosystem was found to be highly depending on terrain age, initial site conditions and geomorphic disturbances. Although the explanatory variables are generally well understood, there is li...

The reasons why some species occur widespread, while related species have restricted geographical ranges have been attributed to habitat specialization or ecological niche breadth. For species in the genus Saxifraga, habitat specialization alone cannot explain the distributional differences observed. We hypothesize that recruitment traits (i.e., ge...

The reasons why some species occur widespread, while related species have restricted geographical ranges have been attributed to habitat specialization or ecological niche breadth. For species in the genus Saxifraga, habitat specialization alone cannot explain the distributional differences observed. We hypothesize that recruitment traits (i.e., ge...

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we...

Species turnover is ubiquitous. However, it remains unknown whether certain types of species are consistently gained or lost across different habitats. Here, we analysed the trajectories of 1827 plant species over time intervals of up to 78years at 141sites across mountain summits, forests, and lowland grasslands in Europe. We found, albeit with...

We announce the formation of the “GLORIA ITALIA NETWORK” and present an overview of the Italian alpine plant communities changes that have occurred in the last 20 years. This network will provide coordination between Italian GLORIA sites and enhance public awareness of changes in alpine plant diversity under climate change.

Satellite-based long-term observations of vegetation cover development in combination with recent in-situ observations provide a basis to better understand the spatio-temporal changes of vegetation patterns, their sensitivity to climate drivers and thus climatic impact on proglacial landscape development. In this study we combined field investigati...

Aims : The Vinschgau is the driest inner-alpine valley in the Eastern Alps and harbours a unique steppe vegetation. We studied these dry grassland communities and aimed to answer the following questions: Which plant communities can be found currently? Do the syntaxa described by Braun-Blanquet in the 1960s still prevail in the area? Has there been...

Aims Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the...

Seed germination and seedling recruitment are key processes in the life cycle of plants. They enable populations to grow, migrate, or persist. Both processes are under environmental control and influenced by site conditions and plant–plant interactions. Here, we present the results of a seed-sowing experiment performed along an elevation gradient (...

Litter decomposition is a key process for carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems and is mainly controlled by environmental conditions, substrate quantity, and quality as well as microbial community abundance and composition. In particular, the effects of climate and atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition on litter decomposition and its...

Climate change was already shown to increase species numbers in high elevations. In contrast, grazing might interfere with climate change effects. To disentangle both the effects remains a major challenge of alpine ecology. The present study investigated both the effects on species diversity along an elevation gradient in the Austrian Central Alps....

The alpine life zone is expected to undergo major changes with ongoing climate change. While an increase of plant species richness on mountain summits has generally been found, competitive displacement may result in the long term. Here, we explore how species richness and surface cover types (vascular plants, litter, bare ground, scree and rock) ch...

Research in environmental science relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature at around 2 meter above ground1-3. These climatic grids however fail to reflect conditions near and below the soil surface, where critical ecosystem functions such as soil carbon storage are controlled and most biodiversity resides4-8...

While climatic research about treeline has a long history, the climatic conditions corresponding to the upper limit of closed alpine grasslands remain poorly understood. Here, we propose a climatic definition for this limit, the 'grassline', in analogy to the treeline, which is based on the growing season length and the soil temperature. Eighty-sev...

The direction and magnitude of long-term changes in local plant species richness are highly variable among studies, while species turnover is ubiquitous. However, it is unknown whether the nature of species turnover is idiosyncratic or whether certain types of species are consistently gained or lost across different habitats. To address this questi...

In this paper we present a low-cost approach to mapping vegetation cover by means of high-resolution close-range terrestrial photogrammetry. A total of 249 clusters of nine 1 m2 plots each, arranged in a 3 × 3 grid, were set up on 18 summits in Mediterranean mountain regions and in the Alps to capture images for photogrammetric processing and in-si...

Storing seeds in seed banks is an effective way to preserve plant diversity and conserve species. An essential step towards a valuable conservation is the validation of germination. This study presents a germination screening of seeds from 255 species of the European Eastern Alps, which were to be stored at the Millennium Seed Bank (Kew, UK). The f...

Gletschervorfelder werden als einmalige Freilandlaboratorien bezeichnet, in denen die schrittweise Ansied-lung von Organismen von Null an beobachtet werden kann. Zahlreiche abiotische und biotische Faktoren sind entscheidend für die erste Besiedlung durch Pflanzen. Unter den biotischen Faktoren spielt vor allem der ver-fügbare Artenpool eine entsch...

GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). Following a previous Long Database Report (Dengler et al. 2018, Phytocoenologia 48, 331–347), we provide here the first update on content and functionality of Gra...

Mountain ecosystems are sensitive indicators of climate change. Long-term studies may be extremely useful in assessing the responses of high-elevation ecosystems to climate change and other anthropogenic drivers. Mountain research sites within the LTER (Long-Term Ecosystem Research) network are representative of various types of ecosystems and span...

In recent years, a multitude of scientific studies has succeeded in verifying the existence of significant climatechanges, in particular since the end of the Little Ice Age (c. 1850) and during the last fifty years. Mountain regions are disproportionately affected by global warming and changing precipitation conditions; temperatures in the Alps, fo...

GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). GrassPlot collects plot records (relevés) from grasslands and other open habitats of the Palaearctic biogeographic realm. It focuses on precisely delimited plots...

Through litter decomposition enormous amounts of carbon is emitted to the atmosphere. Numerous large-scale decomposition experiments have been conducted focusing on this fundamental soil process in order to understand the controls on the terrestrial carbon transfer to the atmosphere. However, previous studies were mostly based on site-specific litt...

Mountain ecosystems are sensitive and reliable indicators of climate change. Long-term studies may be extremely useful in assessing the responses of high-elevation ecosystems to climate change and other anthropogenic drivers from a broad ecological perspective. Mountain research sites within the LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research) network are repr...

Globally accelerating trends in societal development and human environmental impacts since the mid-twentieth century1-7are known as the Great Acceleration and have been discussed as a key indicator of the onset of the Anthropocene epoch6. While reports on ecological responses (for example, changes in species range or local extinctions) to the Great...

The evolution of species or ecotypes can occur gradually through neutral and adaptive genetic changes. To explore the influence of natural selection during early phases of divergence, morphological and ecological discontinuity and its adaptive significance were investigated in six pairs of alpine and independently evolved montane populations of Hel...

Through litter decomposition enormous amount of carbon is emitted to the atmosphere. Numerous large-scale decomposition experiments have been conducted focusing on this fundamental soil process in order to understand the controls on the terrestrial carbon transfer to the atmosphere. However, previous studies were mostly based on site-specific litte...

Through litter decomposition enormous amounts of carbon is emitted to the atmosphere. Numerous large-scale decomposition experiments have been conducted focusing on this fundamental soil process in order to under-stand the controls on the terrestrial carbon transfer to the atmosphere. However, previous studies were mostly based on site-specific litt...

Zusammenfassung: Im Bereich des Oberen Lechs (Tiroler Lech, Österreich) sind noch natürliche Wildflussbereiche mit ausgeprägten Kiesbettfluren erhalten. Der Tiroler Lech bietet damit eine der letztenMöglichkeiten, Diversität und Verbreitung von Alpenschwemmlingen an einem überwiegend natürlich erhaltenen Flussökosystem zu untersuchen. In den letzt...

Evolutionary processes such as recurrent origin of polyploids and enhanced gene flow among polyploids make polyploid complexes taxonomically highly intricate. One such complex is the mostly diploid and tetraploid cloudberries (Vaccinium uliginosum L. s.l.), which are not only one of themost frequently recorded dwarf shrubs in the Arctic, but also i...

The effects of grazing exclusion on species diversity and functional diversity were analyzed along an elevation gradient from the subalpine (1960m a.s.l.) to the lower and upper alpine zone (2275m-2650m a.s.l.) in the Austrian Central Alps for 15 years. Nine sites were chosen, including grasslands at different elevations, a bog and a glacier forela...

Safeguarding plants as seeds in ex situ collections is a cost effective element in an integrated plant conservation approach. The European Alps are a regional centre of plant diversity. Six institutions have established a regional network covering the European Alps which will conserve at least 500 priority plant species and which will improve the c...

Aim In the alpine life zone, plant diversity is strongly determined by local topography and microclimate. We assessed the extent to which aspect and its relatedness to temperature affect plant species diversity, and the colonization and disappearance of species on alpine summits on a pan‐European scale. Location Mountain summits in Europe's alpine...

After glacier retreat, the ice-free forelands arise as easily detectable landforms where primary succession starts from the beginning onwards. Here, basic ecological lessons of colonization and community development can be learned. In this review we summarize the results of several case studies from the Austrian and Italian Alps, draw conclusions a...

Hybridization has been postulated as a main speciation mechanism in Cistus, a hard-seeded group of plants widely distributed in fire-prone Mediterranean shrublands. However, ecological evidence about how the segregation of hybrids from parents might occur is nonexistent. The presence of two hybrid populations in Morocco and Spain from Cistus albidu...

Temperature and drought effects on germination were explored by comparing species from above and below the treeline of the Central Alps. This study should enhance the understanding of species recruitment under changing environmental conditions. The timing of germination, final germination percentage, and optimum temperature of 14 congeneric species...

The demography of the alpine pioneer species Saxifraga aizoides was investigated along a successional gradient at the Rotmoos glacier foreland (2,330-2,450 m a.s.l., Obergurgl, ötztal, Austria) from recently deglaciated areas to advanced successional stages. A basic hypothesis of our study was that fecundity might play an essential role for populat...

In glacier forelands, seeds readily germinate, however, a high proportion of seedlings die shortly after their appearance. We hypothesized that besides drought, frost and missing safe sites, heat on the ground surface could be one of the major threats for seedlings. The heat strain in different ground strata was assessed from 2007 to 2010. The heat...

By means of a long-term monitoring project, species diversity and abundance were analysed at 16 sites along an altitudinal gradient from 1 960 m to 2 830 m in Gurgler Kamm Biosphere Reserve (LTER site of the platform Tyrolean Alps; Obergurgl, Otztal). A total of 108 permanent plots of 1 m(2) were established. The main aim was to observe effects of...

The chapter is an experience in transdisciplinarity illustrated by the case of the Upper Ötztal, part of the Tyrolean LTSER Platform in the Austrian Alps. In this effort, the search was for an effective framework for integrated monitoring that would not be limited to observing and monitoring the state of nature alone, but one that would assess and...

Plant species diversity and species ranges were investigated in two siliceous mountain systems: the Central Alps (Nature Park Texel gruppe, South Tyrol, N-Italy) and in the Central Greater Caucasus (Cross Pass area, Kazbegi region, Georgia). Altitudinal gradients from the treeline ecotone to the upper alpine/subnival and nival zone, respectively, a...

Environmental manipulation studies are integral to determining biological consequences of climate warming. Open Top Chambers (OTCs) have been widely used to assess summer warming effects on terrestrial biota, with their effects during other seasons normally being given less attention even though chambers are often deployed year-round. In addition,...

In mountainous regions, climate warming is expected to shift species’ ranges to higher altitudes. Evidence for such shifts is still mostly from revisitations of historical sites. We present recent (2001 to 2008) changes in vascular plant species richness observed in a standardized monitoring network across Europe’s major mountain ranges. Species ha...