Maria Bobrowski

University of Hamburg | UHH · Institut für Geographie (IGeogr)

Biodiversity is in sharp decline at many scales, declining faster than at any time in human history. On the other hand, it is of inestimable value for humans and their well-being since it safeguards ecosystem functioning and secures the provisioning of ecosystem services on which human civilization is utterly dependent. The global distribution of b...

Developing a R-package that provides functions to download climate data sets of both Chelsa and WorldClim in their various resolution and parameters. The package can be found under the Github-Repository: https://github.com/HelgeJentsch/ClimDatDownloadR and on the open-access repository Zenodo under: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8319614

Using a landscape approach, the sensitivity, and response of a treeline ecotone to climate warming were addressed in a multiyear study in Rolwaling Himal, Nepal. The Rolwaling treeline ecotone still has a vegetation zonation unaffected by human land use, providing ideal conditions for capturing a climate signal. Along the elevational gradient, uppe...

The sensitivity and response of climatic treelines in the Himalayas to climate change is still being debated. Regeneration of tree species in the treeline ecotone is considered a sensitivity indicator and thus of great scientific interest. The aim of this study is to detect predictor variables for regeneration densities of the major tree species in...

With respect to biogeography, biodiversity and vegetation ecology, the Sikkim Himalaya has been much less intensively studied than Nepal or western Himalayan regions. Field-based studies providing empirical data on vegetation-environment relationships or spatial species richness patterns are very rare. The number of studies on climate change and it...

This review summarizes current understanding of drivers for change and of the impact of accelerating global changes on mountains, encompassing effects of climate change and globalization. Mountain regions with complex human–environment systems are known to exhibit a distinct vulnerability to the current fundamental shift in the Earth System driven...

Mountains are fascinating habitats, characterized by steep ecological vertical gradients and corresponding altitudinal vegetation zonation. Alpine treelines as upper boundaries of more or less contiguous tree stands are the most conspicuous vegetation limits; they have always attracted great research interest. Globally, alpine treeline elevations i...

Modelling species across vast distributions in remote, high mountain regions like the Himalayas remains a challenging task. Challenges include, first and foremost, large-scale sampling of species occurrences and acquisition of sufficient high quality, fine-scale environmental parameters. We compiled a review of 157 Himalayan studies published betwe...

Epiphytes are one of the most diversified plant life forms, whose species richness peaks in the tropics and subtropics. Here we examined vertical distribution metrics (i.e., number of epiphyte individuals and epiphyte species richness) of vascular epiphytes (i.e., orchids and ferns) on two dominant host trees (i.e., Schima wallichii (DC.) Korth. an...

Comparing and evaluating global climate datasets and their effect on model performance in regions with limited data availability has received little attention in ecological modeling studies so far. In this study, we aim at comparing the interpolated climate dataset Worldclim 1.4, which is the most widely used in ecological modeling studies, and the...

Epiphytes are one of the most diversified plant life forms, whose species richness peaks in the tropics and subtropics. Here we examined the vertical distribution metrics (i.e., number of epiphyte individuals and epiphyte species richness) of vascular epiphytes (orchids and ferns) on two dominant host trees (Schima wallichii (DC.) Korth. and Quercu...

Due to comparatively fast changes in geodiversity components (e.g. soil and climate.) with increasing elevation, altitudinal gradients are highly suitable to analyze vegetation-environment relationships. Although being a representative part of the eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, the vegetation of the Sikkim Himalaya has rarely been studied...

Habitat use by cervids can have large effects on vegetation. Therefore, factors influencing habitat use are pertinent to ecology, nature conservation as well as management of forests and hunting. The aim of this study was to identify factors influencing habitat use by red and roe deer, Cervus elaphus and Capreolus capreolus, in the Lüneburger Heide...

Until the end of the 21 st century, ongoing climate change is expected to trigger major changes in site conditions and vertical species distributions in high moun tain regions such as the Himalaya. Altitudinal ranges of species used as staple crops in Himalayan agriculture and currently suitable cultivation areas will be affected as well. Changing...

Modelling ecological niches across vast distribution ranges in remote, high mountain regions like the Himalayas faces several data limitations, in particular nonavailability of species occurrence data and fine-scale environmental information of sufficiently high quality. Remotely sensed data provide key advantages such as frequent, complete, and lo...

Aim -- Recent studies increasingly use statistical methods to infer biotic interactions from cooccurrence information at large spatial scale. However, disentangling biotic interactions from other factors that can affect co-occurrence patterns at the macro scale is a major challenge. -- Approach -- We present a set of questions that analysts and re...

Betula utilis is a major constituent of alpine treeline ecotones in the western and central Himalayan region. The objective of this study is to analyse for the first time the performance of different climatic predictors in modelling the potential distribution of B. utilis in the subalpine and alpine belts of the Himalayan region. Using Generalized...

Developing sustainable adaptation pathways under climate change conditions in mountain regions requires accurate predictions of treeline shifts and future distribution ranges of treeline species. Here, we model for the first time the potential distribution of Betula utilis, a principal Himalayan treeline species, to provide a basis for the analysis...

Knowledge about habitat utilisation and food selection of red and roe deer are crucial for management strategies. To investigate the influence of different factors on habitat utilisation and food selection in winter we conducted a systematic survey (1309 sampling points). For statistical analyses we used food damage on trees and faecal pellet count...

Knowledge about habitat utilisation and food selection of red and roe deer are crucial for management strategies. To investigate the influence of different factors on habitat utilisation and food selection in winter we conducted a systematic survey (1309 sampling points). For statistical analyses we used food damage on trees and faecal pellet count...

High mountain regions have been identified as a major hotspot of climate change during recent decades, resulting in a rapid change of local geo- and ecosystems. The ecosystem response to changes of near-surface temperatures and precipitation is often analyzed and simulated by means of statistical or process-based modeling applications. However, the...

Treelines are sensitive to changing climatic conditions, in particular to temperature increases, and the majority of global alpine treelines has shown a response to recent climate change. High temperature trends in the Himalaya suggest a treeline advance to higher elevations; it is largely unknown, however, how broader-scale climate inputs interact...

Climate warming is expected to induce treelines to advance to higher elevations. Empirical studies in diverse mountain ranges, however, give evidence of both advancing alpine treelines and rather insignificant responses. The inconsistency of findings suggests distinct differences in the sensitivity of global treelines to recent climate change. It i...

Global warming causes shifts in species distributions and threatens biodiversity and ecosystem services, in particular in mountain regions such as the Himalaya, which shows above-average warming rates. However, species distribution modelling studies have hardly been conducted to date in this mountain system. This study aims at investigating how the...

Climate warming is expected to induce treelines to advance to higher elevations. Empirical studies in diverse mountain ranges, however, give evidence of both advancing alpine treelines as well as rather insignificant responses. The inconsistency of findings suggests distinct differences in the sensitivity of global treelines to recent climate chang...

The evaluation of the distribution of large herbivores in forest communities is an important question for animal ecology, forestry and management. The distribution of animals is often directly connected to their feeding habitat. However, feeding habitat selection is influenced by a variety of different parameters, ranging from forest characteristic...