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Profiteers of environmental change in the Swiss Alps: increase of thermophilous and generalist plants in wetland ecosystems within the last 10 years

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Abstract

It has been predicted that Europe will experience a rise in temperature of 2.2–5.3 °C within this century. This increase in temperature may lead to vegetation change along altitudinal gradients. To test whether vegetation composition has already changed in the recent decade due to current warming (and other concomitant environmental changes), we recorded plant species composition in 1995 and 2005/2006 in Swiss pre-alpine fen meadows (800–1,400 m a.s.l.). Despite no obvious changes in the management of these fens, overall, plant species richness (cumulative number of plant species at five plots per site) significantly increased over this period. This was mainly due to an increase in the number of thermophilous, rich-soil-indicator and shade-indicator species, which corresponded to increased community productivity and shading within the vegetation layer. In contrast, fen specialists significantly declined in species numbers. The strongest species shifts occurred at the lowest sites, which overall had a higher colonization rate by new species than did sites at higher altitudes. Vegetation change along the altitudinal gradient was also affected by different types of land management: early-flowering species and species with low habitat specificity had high colonization rates in grazed fens, especially at low altitudes.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the nature conservancy agencies and municipal authorities for providing information on the study sites, and to all the farmers and landowners who allowed us to work on their land. We would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for improvements on an earlier version of this manuscript. H.M. and S.F. were funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in Iran. This work was also supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation to J. J. (no. 3100AO-104006), a grant of the Stiftung für wissenschaftliche Forschung at the University of Zurich to B.S and a grant of the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN to A.B. We thank the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) for providing the climate data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057, Zurich, Switzerland

    H. Moradi, S. Fakheran, M. Peintinger, B. Schmid & J. Joshi

  2. Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    A. Bergamini

  3. Department of Natural Resources, Isfahan University of Technology, 84156-83111, Isfahan, Iran

    H. Moradi & S. Fakheran

  4. Biodiversity Research/Systematic Botany, Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Maulbeerallee 1, 14469, Potsdam, Germany

    J. Joshi

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  1. H. Moradi
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  4. A. Bergamini
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Correspondence to J. Joshi.

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Moradi, H., Fakheran, S., Peintinger, M. et al. Profiteers of environmental change in the Swiss Alps: increase of thermophilous and generalist plants in wetland ecosystems within the last 10 years. Alp Botany 122, 45–56 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00035-012-0102-3

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