Climate change impacts on the Alpine ecosystem: an overview with focus on the soil

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The Alpine ecosystem is very sensitive to climatic changes, which have an influence on glaciers, snow, vegetation and soils. The aim of this review is to illustrate the effects of global change on the Alpine soil ecosystem, which is an optimal marker to record them. The manuscript enhances our understanding of the global change effect on the Alpine environment: on morphology, on ice, on vegetation and points out how the cycles of soil nutrients equilibrium have been changed with a direct effect on soils that support plant species. The changes in cryosphere, glacier reduction and periglacial environment as glaciers retreat, decrease in the snow cover extent and earlier snowmelt, determine an effect on soils (on the structure, organic matter and humus forms, soil processes and soil types) from the top of the Alpine horizon to the bottom. The processes induced by climate change (such as erosion and tree line shifting) have a direct effect on water balance that can be observed on soil profile characters with an effect on upward migration, change in phenology, extensive losses of species. The equilibrium of the biogeochemical cycles has been changed and this has a direct effect on soils that support plant species.

Early Evidence of Shifts in Alpine Summit Vegetation: A Case Study From Kashmir Himalaya

“…Biological consequences of climate warming are becoming increasingly obvious across a wide range of ecosystems (Woodward et al, 2010;Bellard et al, 2012;Grimm et al, 2013;García et al, 2018). Alpine ecosystems in particular are considered to be highly sensitive to global warming as they are generally adapted to lower temperature regimes (Körner, 2003;Chersich et al, 2015;Elmendorf et al, 2015). Despite their extreme environmental conditions, alpine ecosystems harbor rich biodiversity with a high degree of endemism (Gehrke and Linder, 2014;Smyčka et al, 2017;Noroozi et al, 2018).…”

“…The Himalaya, sustaining the world's highest mountain peaks, undoubtedly is one of the most sensitive areas to climate warming (Immerzeel et al, 2010;Rowan, 2017;Shekhar et al, 2017). The Himalaya, being one of the global biodiversity hotspots, harbors diverse alpine flora (Myers et al, 2000;Dar and Khuroo, 2013). Under the contemporary climate change, this region is believed to be warming at a much higher rate than the global average (Kumar et al, 2006).…”

Relationship between Spatiotemporal Variations of Climate, Snow Cover and Plant Phenology over the Alps—An Earth Observation-Based Analysis

“…Mountain ecosystems are assumed particularly affected by climate change with various effects on ecosystems, cryosphere, and hydrological regimes [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. Observed effects of climate warming on mountain phenology are e.g., longer growing seasons [19], the migration of plant species to higher altitudes [51][52][53][54] and the associated impacts on niches and endemic species [53][54][55][56][57][58].…”

Changes in thermic limits and acclimation assessment for an alpine plant by chlorophyll fluorescence analysis: F_v/F_mvs. R_fd

“…Temperature thresholds and acclimation phenomena are of special interest, since thermic stress is one of the most important limiting factors that determinate the plant survival, especially in alpine ecosystems, where freezing stress is the first environmental "filter" that a species has to pass to become "alpine" and where heat stress may appears every time solar radiation peaks and top soils dry (Körner 2003, Bannister et al 2005, Larcher et al 2010, Sierra-Almeida and Cavieres 2012. It is precisely in alpine ecosystems where climate change effects act more quickly than in other terrestrial habitats, causing biodiversity loss, habitat degradation and landscape modifications (Chersich et al 2015), depending on the rate of climatic change, the species pool and the biogeographical region (Beniston 2003, Pauli et al 2012. Among these high mountain habitats, the Mediterranean alpine ecosystems deserve particular attention for hosting a high number of endemic and rare plants (Pauli et al 2003).…”