Soil invertebrate abundance, diversity, and community composition across steep high elevation snowmelt gradients in the European Alps

We investigated the influence of fine-scale elevational gradients and overstory disturbance on bryophyte distribution, diversity, and community composition. Bryophyte species cover and richness were sampled across 60 randomly selected plots within high-elevation spruce–fir ( Picea – Abies ) forests of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Ordination and regression analyses revealed a fine-scale elevation gradient (700 m) in bryophyte community composition. Observed changes in bryophyte diversity and community composition were also associated with variation in deciduous basal area and thus litter composition, the prevalence of herbaceous plants, and the degree of canopy openness resulting from balsam woolly adelgid ( Adelges piceae Ratz.) infestation. Although overstory disturbances, such as those caused by the adelgid, create suitable substrate for bryophyte colonization, the corresponding increase in light availability and deciduous basal area may alter bryophyte diversity and community assemblages.

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Spatial and Annual Variation in Microbial Abundance, Community Composition, and Diversity Associated With Alpine Surface Snow

Frontiers in Microbiology ◽

10.3389/fmicb.2021.781904 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Lucas Fillinger ◽

Kerstin Hürkamp ◽

Christine Stumpp ◽

Nina Weber ◽

Dominik Forster ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Microbial Community ◽

Community Composition ◽

Microbial Community Composition ◽

Alpha Diversity ◽

Community Diversity ◽

Taxon Richness ◽

European Alps ◽

Prokaryotic Cell ◽

Surface Snow

Understanding microbial community dynamics in the alpine cryosphere is an important step toward assessing climate change impacts on these fragile ecosystems and meltwater-fed environments downstream. In this study, we analyzed microbial community composition, variation in community alpha and beta diversity, and the number of prokaryotic cells and virus-like particles (VLP) in seasonal snowpack from two consecutive years at three high altitude mountain summits along a longitudinal transect across the European Alps. Numbers of prokaryotic cells and VLP both ranged around 104 and 105 per mL of snow meltwater on average, with variation generally within one order of magnitude between sites and years. VLP-to-prokaryotic cell ratios spanned two orders of magnitude, with median values close to 1, and little variation between sites and years in the majority of cases. Estimates of microbial community alpha diversity inferred from Hill numbers revealed low contributions of common and abundant microbial taxa to the total taxon richness, and thus low community evenness. Similar to prokaryotic cell and VLP numbers, differences in alpha diversity between years and sites were generally relatively modest. In contrast, community composition displayed strong variation between sites and especially between years. Analyses of taxonomic and phylogenetic community composition showed that differences between sites within years were mainly characterized by changes in abundances of microbial taxa from similar phylogenetic clades, whereas shifts between years were due to significant phylogenetic turnover. Our findings on the spatiotemporal dynamics and magnitude of variation of microbial abundances, community diversity, and composition in surface snow may help define baseline levels to assess future impacts of climate change on the alpine cryosphere.

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Range dynamics of mountain plants decrease with elevation

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1713936115 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 115 (8) ◽

pp. 1848-1853 ◽

Cited By ~ 86

Author(s):

Sabine B. Rumpf ◽

Karl Hülber ◽

Günther Klonner ◽

Dietmar Moser ◽

Martin Schütz ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Plant Species ◽

Species Abundance ◽

Elevational Gradient ◽

High Elevation ◽

Range Limits ◽

European Alps ◽

Cold Adapted ◽

Recent Climate ◽

Range Dynamics ◽

Mountain Plant

Many studies report that mountain plant species are shifting upward in elevation. However, the majority of these reports focus on shifts of upper limits. Here, we expand the focus and simultaneously analyze changes of both range limits, optima, and abundances of 183 mountain plant species. We therefore resurveyed 1,576 vegetation plots first recorded before 1970 in the European Alps. We found that both range limits and optima shifted upward in elevation, but the most pronounced trend was a mean increase in species abundance. Despite huge species-specific variation, range dynamics showed a consistent trend along the elevational gradient: Both range limits and optima shifted upslope faster the lower they were situated historically, and species’ abundance increased more for species from lower elevations. Traits affecting the species’ dispersal and persistence capacity were not related to their range dynamics. Using indicator values to stratify species by their thermal and nutrient demands revealed that elevational ranges of thermophilic species tended to expand, while those of cold-adapted species tended to contract. Abundance increases were strongest for nutriphilous species. These results suggest that recent climate warming interacted with airborne nitrogen deposition in driving the observed dynamics. So far, the majority of species appear as “winners” of recent changes, yet “losers” are overrepresented among high-elevation, cold-adapted species with low nutrient demands. In the decades to come, high-alpine species may hence face the double pressure of climatic changes and novel, superior competitors that move up faster than they themselves can escape to even higher elevations.

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Soil CO2flux and photoautotrophic community composition in high-elevation, ‘barren’ soil

Environmental Microbiology ◽

10.1111/j.1462-2920.2008.01844.x ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 674-686 ◽

Cited By ~ 62

Author(s):

Kristen R. Freeman ◽

Monte Y. Pescador ◽

Sasha C. Reed ◽

Elizabeth K. Costello ◽

Michael S. Robeson ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Community Composition ◽

High Elevation ◽

Barren Soil

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The altitudinal temperature lapse rates applied to high elevation rockfalls studies in the Western European Alps

Theoretical and Applied Climatology ◽

10.1007/s00704-017-2066-0 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 131 (3-4) ◽

pp. 1479-1491 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Guido Nigrelli ◽

Simona Fratianni ◽

Arianna Zampollo ◽

Laura Turconi ◽

Marta Chiarle

Keyword(s):

High Elevation ◽

European Alps ◽

Western European ◽

Lapse Rates

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Drivers of tropical soil invertebrate community composition and richness across tropical secondary forests using DNA metasystematics

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-020-75452-4 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Katie M. McGee ◽

Teresita M. Porter ◽

Michael Wright ◽

Mehrdad Hajibabaei

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Community Composition ◽

Tropical Forests ◽

Secondary Forest ◽

Soil Invertebrates ◽

Primary Forest ◽

Soil Invertebrate ◽

Secondary Forests ◽

Invertebrate Community ◽

Invertebrate Communities

Abstract Tropical forests are fundamental ecosystems, essential for providing terrestrial primary productivity, global nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. Despite their importance, tropical forests are currently threatened by deforestation and associated activities. Moreover, tropical regions are now mostly represented by secondary forest regrowth, with half of the remaining tropical forests as secondary forest. Soil invertebrates are an important component to the functioning and biodiversity of these soil ecosystems. However, it remains unclear how these past land-use activities and subsequent secondary forest developments have altered the soil invertebrate communities and any potential ecological consequences associated with this. DNA metabarcoding offers an effective approach to rapidly monitor soil invertebrate communities under different land-use practices and within secondary forests. In this study, we used DNA metabarcoding to detect community-based patterns of soil invertebrate composition across a primary forest, a 23-year-old secondary forest, and a 33-year-old secondary forest and the associated soil environmental drivers of the soil invertebrate community structure in the Maquenque National Wildlife Refuge of Costa Rica (MNWR). We also used a species contribution analysis (SIMPER) to determine which soil invertebrate groups may be an indication of these soils reaching a pre-disturbed state such as a primary forest. We found that the soil invertebrate community composition at class, order, family, and ESV level were mostly significantly different across that habitats. We also found that the primary forest had a greater richness of soil invertebrates compared to the 23-year-old and 33-year-old secondary forest. Moreover, a redundancy analysis indicated that soil moisture influenced soil invertebrate community structure and explained up to 22% of the total variation observed in the community composition across the habitats; whereas soil invertebrate richness was structured by soil microbial biomass carbon (C) (Cmic) and explained up to 52% of the invertebrate richness across the primary and secondary forests. Lastly, the SIMPER analysis revealed that Naididae, Entomobryidae, and Elateridae could be important indicators of soil and forest recuperation in the MNWR. This study adds to the increasing evidence that soil invertebrates are intimately linked with the soil microbial biomass carbon (Cmic) and that even after 33 years of natural regrowth of a forest, these land use activities can still have persisting effects on the overall composition and richness of the soil invertebrate communities.

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Both microbial abundance and community composition mattered for N2 production rates of the overlying water in one high-elevation river

Environmental Research ◽

10.1016/j.envres.2020.109933 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 189 ◽

pp. 109933 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sibo Zhang ◽

Xinghui Xia ◽

Lilin Yu ◽

Zhenrui Zhang ◽

Junfeng Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Community Composition ◽

High Elevation ◽

Microbial Abundance ◽

Production Rates ◽

Overlying Water

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Millennium-long summer temperature variations in the European Alps as reconstructed from tree rings

Climate of the Past ◽

10.5194/cp-6-379-2010 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 379-400 ◽

Cited By ~ 45

Author(s):

C. Corona ◽

J. Guiot ◽

J. L. Edouard ◽

F. Chalié ◽

U. Büntgen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Tree Ring ◽

Regional Growth ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Warming Trend ◽

High Elevation ◽

Ice Age ◽

European Alps ◽

Linear Calibration ◽

Late 20Th Century ◽

Short Tree

Abstract. This paper presents a reconstruction of the summer temperatures over the Greater Alpine Region (44.05°–47.41° N, 6.43°–13° E) during the last millennium based on a network of 38 multi-centennial larch and stone pine chronologies. Tree ring series are standardized using an Adaptative Regional Growth Curve, which attempts to remove the age effect from the low frequency variations in the series. The proxies are calibrated using the June to August mean temperatures from the HISTALP high-elevation temperature time series spanning the 1818–2003. The method combines an analogue technique, which is able to extend the too short tree-ring series, an artificial neural network technique for an optimal non-linear calibration including a bootstrap technique for calculating error assessment on the reconstruction. About 50% of the temperature variance is reconstructed. Low-elevation instrumental data back to 1760 compared to their instrumental target data reveal divergence between (warmer) early instrumental measurements and (colder) proxy estimates. The proxy record indicates cool conditions, from the mid-11th century to the mid-12th century, related to the Oort solar minimum followed by a short Medieval Warm Period (1200–1420). The Little Ice Age (1420–1830) appears particularly cold between 1420 and 1820 with summers that are 0.8 °C cooler than the 1901–2000 period. The new record suggests that the persistency of the late 20th century warming trend is unprecedented. It also reveals significant similarities with other alpine reconstructions.

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Coupling the delta-h parametrization with melt beneath a supraglacial debris cover: an evaluation across 54 glaciers in the southern European Alps

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-59 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Francesco Avanzi ◽

Simone Gabellani ◽

Edoardo Cremonese ◽

Umberto Morra di Cella ◽

Matthias Huss

Keyword(s):

Mass Balance ◽

Regional Scale ◽

High Elevation ◽

Glacier Mass Balance ◽

European Alps ◽

Hydrological Models ◽

Elevation Gradients ◽

Ice Flow ◽

Thickness Change ◽

Debris Cover

Glacier mass balance is an essential component of the water budget of high-elevation and high-latitude regions, and yet this process is rather oversimplified in most hydrological models. This oversimplification is particularly relevant when it comes to representing two mechanisms: ice flow dynamics and melt beneath a supraglacial debris cover. In 2010, Huss et al. proposed a parsimonious approach to account for&#160; glacier dynamics in hydrological models without solving complex equations of three-dimensional ice flow, the so-called delta-h parametrization. On the other hand, accounting for melt of debris-covered ice is still challenging as&#160; estimates of debris thickness are rare.&#160;Here, we leveraged a distributed dataset of glacier-thickness change to derive a glacier-specific delta-h parametrization for 54 glaciers across the Aosta Valley (Italy), as well as&#160; develop a novel approach for modeling melt beneath supraglacial debris based on residuals between locally observed change in thickness and that expected by regional elevation gradients. This approach does not require any on-the-ground data on debris cover, and as such it is particularly suited for ungauged regions where remote sensing is the only, feasible source of information for modeling.&#160;We found an expected, significant variability in both the delta-h parametrization and residuals over debris-covered ice across glaciers, with somewhat steeper orographic gradients in the former compared to the curves originally proposed by Huss et al. for Swiss glaciers. At a regional scale, the glacier mass balance showed a clear transition between a regime dominated by active glacier flow above 2,300 m ASL and a debris-dominated regime below this elevation threshold, which makes accounting for melt in the debris-covered area essential to correctly capture the future fate of low-elevation glaciers. Implementing the delta-h parametrization and our proposed approach to melt beneath supraglacial debris into S3M, a distributed cryospheric model, yielded an improved realism in estimates of future changes in glacier geometry&#160; compared to assuming non-dynamic downwasting.

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