Korner, High altitude plant life in a warm, CO2-enriched atmosphere

Warming will directly affect trees and thus, the high altitude tree limit, because of the tree's aerodynamic coupling to the atmosphere. In contrast, warming will affect low stature vegetation largely via snow cover duration. Elevated CO2 does not lead to higher productivity in alpine vegetation, but may select for certain responsive taxa at the loss of others.
      
In contrast, nitrogen deposition, at rates close to current front range fluxes, induces a major transformation of alpine vegetation. Consequences of landuse changes, particularly in the upper montane belt, may exceed the impact of all previously mentioned drivers to an extent that hydrology is significantly affected.
    
Such effects had never been quantified in economic terms, and need urgent attention at catchment scale in light of the projected shortages in both water and electric energy.
          
All these environmental changes will also affect biodiversity, but neither the extent of such changes nor the ecosystem scale consequences are easy to assess, given the overwhelming significance of geodiversity at high elevation.
        
I will present a few example of ongoing research, which underline the ongoing changes in alpine biota. Many of these changes are small and subtle, and do not necessarily meet the requirement of 'early warning'. The changes in and near the treeline and in snow bed communities are possibly among the few cases, where plants do show rapid changes.

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