Effects of rapid climatic change on plant biodiversity in boreal and montaneecosystems

Objective

The objective of the project is to predict changes in plant biodiversity that could be induced by climatic changes in boreal and mountaineous European areas.


Biodiversity, defined as the number of species present in the landscape, can be diminished by rapid climatic change if species either do not have a sufficient area of potentially suitable new habitat to which to retreat, or if poor dispersal prevents them from reaching their new habitat in time. Enhanced greenhouse warming will, in the next century, diminish the extent of boreo-alpine habitat. A similar reduction occurred during the Holocene thermal maximum. This project will examine the extent of these readjustments in four mountane 20-km squares, situated in Norway, Scotland, western Alps and Appenino Abbruzese, and will assess their consequences for local biodiversity. The vegetation of each square will be mapped from multidate satellite images. Methods developed for global biome modelling will be applied to the study sites; the link between continent-wide bioclimatic drivers and local climatology will be strengthened. Flora and vegetation will be interpreted in terms of a typology of plant functional types developed for global studies. Biodiversity will be related to species-abundance curves within plant functional types for broadly defined biotopes, coupled to an estimate of the abundance of biotopes.

Altitudinal limits of species in the mountains will be related to their geographic limits at the continental scale. Predictions of biodiversity based on reconstructions of past climate at the continental scale will be verified by macrofossil analysis of sediment cores. In particular, we shall seek to quantify the magnitude of the bottleneck at the thermal maximum. Predictions for the future will be based on GCM scenarios of climate change coupled to spatially explicit models of the 20-km study squares using a combined GIS-modelling approach.

Programme(s)

• FP3-ENV 1C - Specific research and technological development programme (EEC) in the field of the environment, 1990-1994

Topic(s)

• 0106 - Biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem dynamics

Funding Scheme

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinator

NERC Institute of Terrestrial Ecology

Address

Monks Wood Experimental Station Abbots Ripton
PE17 2LS Huntingdon
United Kingdom

Participants (4)

Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet

Norway

Address

7034 Trondheim

Norwegian Institute for Nature Research

Norway

Address

2,Tungasletta
7005 Trondheim

University of Durham

United Kingdom

Address

South Road
DH1 3LE Durham

Université de Grenoble I (Université Joseph Fourier)

France

Address

38041 Grenoble