scholarly journals Climate change will increase the potential conflict between skiing and high-elevation bird species in the Alps

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (11) ◽  
pp. 2299-2309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattia Brambilla ◽  
Paolo Pedrini ◽  
Antonio Rolando ◽  
Dan E. Chamberlain
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
The Alps

scholarly journals Projected range contractions of montane biodiversity under global warming

2010 ◽  
Vol 277 (1699) ◽  
pp. 3401-3410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank A. La Sorte ◽  
Walter Jetz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Extinction Risk ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Bird Diversity ◽  
Vertical Range ◽  
Vertical Distributions ◽  
Montane Biodiversity ◽  
Mountain Systems

Mountains, especially in the tropics, harbour a unique and large portion of the world's biodiversity. Their geographical isolation, limited range size and unique environmental adaptations make montane species potentially the most threatened under impeding climate change. Here, we provide a global baseline assessment of geographical range contractions and extinction risk of high-elevation specialists in a future warmer world. We consider three dispersal scenarios for simulated species and for the world's 1009 montane bird species. Under constrained vertical dispersal (VD), species with narrow vertical distributions are strongly impacted; at least a third of montane bird diversity is severely threatened. In a scenario of unconstrained VD, the location and structure of mountain systems emerge as a strong driver of extinction risk. Even unconstrained lateral movements offer little improvement to the fate of montane species in the Afrotropics, Australasia and Nearctic. Our results demonstrate the particular roles that the geography of species richness, the spatial structure of lateral and particularly vertical range extents and the specific geography of mountain systems have in determining the vulnerability of montane biodiversity to climate change. Our findings confirm the outstanding levels of biotic perturbation and extinction risk that mountain systems are likely to experience under global warming and highlight the need for additional knowledge on species' vertical distributions, dispersal and adaptive capacities.

scholarly journals Climate change causes upslope shifts and mountaintop extirpations in a tropical bird community

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (47) ◽  
pp. 11982-11987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin G. Freeman ◽  
Micah N. Scholer ◽  
Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez ◽  
John W. Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Bird Community ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Range Size ◽  
Tropical Andes ◽  
Recent Warming ◽  
Upper Limits ◽  
The Tropics

Montane species worldwide are shifting upslope in response to recent temperature increases. These upslope shifts are predicted to lead to mountaintop extinctions of species that live only near mountain summits, but empirical examples of populations that have disappeared are sparse. We show that recent warming constitutes an “escalator to extinction” for birds on a remote Peruvian mountain—high-elevation species have declined in both range size and abundance, and several previously common mountaintop residents have disappeared from the local community. Our findings support projections that warming will likely drive widespread extirpations and extinctions of high-elevation taxa in the tropical Andes. Such climate change-driven mountaintop extirpations may be more likely in the tropics, where temperature seems to exert a stronger control on species’ range limits than in the temperate zone. In contrast, we show that lowland bird species at our study site are expanding in range size as they shift their upper limits upslope and may thus benefit from climate change.

scholarly journals Could Hair-Lichens of High-Elevation Forests Help Detect the Impact of Global Change in the Alps?

Diversity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juri Nascimbene ◽  
Renato Benesperi ◽  
Paolo Giordani ◽  
Martin Grube ◽  
Lorenzo Marini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Change ◽  
Ecological Indicators ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
European Alps ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Alps ◽  
The Impact ◽  
High Elevation Forests

Climate change and the anthropic emission of pollutants are likely to have an accelerated impact in high-elevation mountain areas. This phenomenon could have negative consequences on alpine habitats and for species of conservation in relative proximity to dense human populations. This premise implies that the crucial task is in the early detection of warning signals of ecological changes. In alpine landscapes, high-elevation forests provide a unique environment for taking full advantage of epiphytic lichens as sensitive indicators of climate change and air pollution. This literature review is intended to provide a starting point for developing practical biomonitoring tools that elucidate the potential of hair-lichens, associated with high-elevation forests, as ecological indicators of global change in the European Alps. We found support for the practical use of hair-lichens to detect the impact of climate change and nitrogen pollution in high-elevation forest habitats. The use of these organisms as ecological indicators presents an opportunity to expand monitoring activities and develop predictive tools that support decisions on how to mitigate the effects of global change in the Alps.

Bird community structure in natural and urbanized habitats along an altitudinal gradient in Pauri district (Garhwal Himalaya) of Uttarakhand state, India

Biologia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Archana Naithani ◽  
Dinesh Bhatt
Keyword(s):  
Community Structure ◽  
Altitudinal Gradient ◽  
Diversity Index ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Bird Community ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Base Line ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Forest Habitat ◽  
Rarefaction Analysis

AbstractIn the Indian subcontinent there is hardly any study that compares the bird community structure of urban/suburban areas with those of forest habitat. The present survey identified diverse assemblages of birds in the Pauri district at different elevations. A total of 125 bird species belonging to 40 families including two least count species (Lophura leucomelanos and Pucrasia marcolopha) were recorded during this survey in the forest and urbanized habitats of Pauri District (Garhwal Hiamalaya) of Uttarakhand state, India. The high elevation (Pauri 1600–2100 m a.s.l.), mid elevation (Srikot-Khanda 900–1300 m a.s.l.) and low elevation (Srinagar 500–900 m a.s.l.) contributed 88.8%, 63.2% and 58.4% of the total species respectively. Rarefaction analysis and Shannon diversity index showed that the high elevation forest habitat had highest bird species richness (BSR) and bird species diversity (BSD) followed by the mid and then the low elevation forests. BSR and BSD fluctuated across seasons at all elevations but not across habitat types. Present study provides a base line data about avian community composition in urbanized and natural habitats along altitudinal gradient in the study area. This information may be useful to the conservation biologists for the better management and conservation of the avifauna in the Western Himalaya, a part of one of the hot biodiversity spots of the world.

scholarly journals Climate and resource information as tools for dealing with farmer-pastoralist conflicts in the Sahel

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Mertz ◽  
Kjeld Rasmussen ◽  
Laura Vang Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Resource Information ◽  
Key Stakeholders

Abstract. Conflicts between pastoralists and farmers in the Sahel arise from competition over land and water resources or because of livestock damages to crops. Rather than being linked to larger environmental change processes such as climate change, they are often causes by inappropriate zoning of land, governance and unequal power relations between stakeholders in the conflicts. In this paper, we explore whether improved weather and resource information and improvement in its communication could prevent conflicts or reduce their severity. Based on a survey of key stakeholders and studies on pastoral access to and use of information, we conclude that improved information may both reduce and increase the level of conflict, depending on the context. Communication of improved information will need to go beyond just the weather and resource information and also include the multiple options for herd movements as well as providing information on herd crowding and potential conflict areas.

scholarly journals Late Holocene summer temperatures in the central Andes reconstructed from the sediments of high-elevation Laguna Chepical, Chile (32° S)

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 2277-2308
Author(s):  
R. de Jong ◽  
L. von Gunten ◽  
A. Maldonado ◽  
M. Grosjean
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South America ◽  
Temperature Reconstruction ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Central Chile ◽  
Southern South America ◽  
Calibration Period ◽  
The Past ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract. High-resolution reconstructions of climate variability that cover the past millennia are necessary to improve the understanding of natural and anthropogenic climate change across the globe. Although numerous records are available for the mid- and high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, global assessments are still compromised by the scarcity of data from the Southern Hemisphere. This is particularly the case for the tropical and subtropical areas. In addition, high elevation sites in the South American Andes may provide insight into the vertical structure of climate change in the mid-troposphere. This study presents a 3000 yr long austral summer (November to February) temperature reconstruction derived from the 210Pb and 14C dated organic sediments of Laguna Chepical (32°16' S/70°30' W, 3050 m a.s.l.), a high-elevation glacial lake in the subtropical Andes of central Chile. Scanning reflectance spectroscopy in the visible light range provided the spectral index R570/R630, which reflects the clay mineral content in lake sediments. For the calibration period (AD 1901–2006), the R570/R630 data were regressed against monthly meteorological reanalysis data, showing that this proxy was strongly and significantly correlated with mean summer (NDJF) temperatures (R3yr = −0.63, padj = 0.01). This calibration model was used to make a quantitative temperature reconstruction back to 1000 BC. The reconstruction (with a model error RMSEPboot of 0.33 °C) shows that the warmest decades of the past 3000 yr occurred during the calibration period. The 19th century (end of the Little Ice Age (LIA)) was cool. The prominent warmth reconstructed for the 18th century, which was also observed in other records from this area, seems systematic for subtropical and southern South America but remains difficult to explain. Except for this warm period, the LIA was generally characterized by cool summers. Back to AD 1400, the results from this study compare remarkably well to low altitude records from the Chilean Central Valley and Southern South America. However, the reconstruction from Laguna Chepical does not show a warm Medieval Climate Anomaly during the 12–13th century, which is consistent with records from tropical South America. The Chepical record also indicates substantial cooling prior to 800 BC. This coincides with well-known regional as well as global glacier advances which have been attributed to a grand solar minimum. This study thus provides insight into the climatic drivers and temperature patterns in a region for which currently very few data are available. It also shows that since ca AD 1400, long term temperature patterns were generally similar at low and high altitudes in central Chile.

scholarly journals Holocene climate change, permafrost, and cryogenic carbonate formation: insights from a recently deglaciated, high-elevation cave in the Austrian Alps

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1493-1526
Author(s):  
C. Spötl ◽  
H. Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Structure ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Water Infiltration ◽  
New Class ◽  
Austrian Alps ◽  
Carbonate Formation ◽  
Discontinuous Permafrost ◽  
The Alps ◽  
Important Time ◽  
Permafrost Thawing

Abstract. Cryogenically formed carbonate particles represent a rather new class of speleothems whose origin is directly linked to the presence of perennial ice in the subsurface. Recent studies concluded that dating these deposits provides important time constraints on the presence and the thickness of permafrost e.g. during the last glacial period. More precisely, these carbonates require the coexistence of water and ice and hence record episodes of permafrost thawing. To shed more light on the origin of the coarsely crystalline variety of these cryogenic cave carbonates – CCCcoarse for short – we examined a high-elevation cave site in the western part of the Austrian Alps which is located in an area dominated by permafrost features and transformed from an ice cave into an essentially ice-free cave during the past decade. Two side chambers of the main gallery revealed cryogenic calcite deposits whose isotopic composition indicates that they formed in individual pools of water carved in ice which underwent very slow freezing under closed-system conditions, i.e. enclosed in ice. 230Th dating shows that most of these carbonates formed ca. 2600 yr BP. Based on comparisons with other palaeoclimate archives in the Alps this thawing episode did not occur during a climate optimum, nor did CCCcoarse form in this cave during e.g. the Roman or the Medieval Warm Periods. Our results suggest that the occurrence of CCCcoarse, at least in mountain regions characterized by discontinuous permafrost, may be more stochastic than previously thought. Given the inherent heterogeneity of karst aquifers and the important role of localized water infiltration in modifying the thermal structure of the subsurface we caution against attributing CCCcoarse occurrences solely to peak warming conditions, while confirming the unique significance of these deposits in providing robust age constraints on permafrost thawing episodes.

scholarly journals Dendrochronological Assessment of Whitebark Pine Response to Past Climate Change: Implications for a Threatened Species in Grand Teton National Park

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 58-64
Author(s):  
Kendra McLauchlan ◽  
Kyleen Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
National Park ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Multiple Stressors ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Climatic Variability ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Whitebark Pine ◽  
Grand Teton National Park ◽  
Pine Trees

One of the keystone tree species in subalpine forests of the western United States – whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis, hereafter whitebark pine) – is experiencing a significant mortality event (Millar et al. 2012). Whitebark pine occupies a relatively restricted range in the high-elevation ecosystems in the northern Rockies and its future is uncertain. The current decline of whitebark pine populations has been attributed to pine beetle infestations, blister rust infections, anthropogenic fire suppression, and climate change (Millar et al. 2012). Despite the knowledge that whitebark pine is severely threatened by multiple stressors, little is known about the historic capacity of this species to handle these stressors. More specifically, it is unknown how whitebark pine has dealt with past climatic variability, particularly variation in the type of precipitation (rain vs. snow) available for soil moisture, and how differences in quantity of precipitation have influenced the establishment and growth of modern stands. We propose to study the past responses of whitebark pine to paleoclimatic conditions, which would be useful to park ecologists in developing new conservation and regeneration plans to prevent the extinction of this already severely threatened high-elevation resource. The purpose of this study is to determine in great temporal and spatial detail the demographics of the current stand of whitebark pine trees in the watershed surrounding an unnamed, high-altitude pond (known informally as Whitebark Pine Moraine Pond) located approximately 3.06 miles NW of Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park (GTNP). The main objectives of this study were: 1.) To obtain the precise GPS locations of the current stand of whitebark pine trees in the watershed to generate a GIS map detailing their locations. 2.) To obtain increment cores of a subset of the trees in the watershed to estimate age and date of establishment for the current stand of whitebark pines, with particular attention to fire history. 3.) To analyze ring widths from core samples to identify climatic indicators that may influence the regeneration and survival of whitebark pine.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document