Think globally, measure locally: The MIREN standardized protocol for monitoring species distributions along elevation gradients

Abstract

Climate change and other global change drivers threaten plant diversity in mountains worldwide. A widely documented response to such environmental modifications is for plant species to change their elevational ranges. Range shifts are often idiosyncratic and difficult to generalize, partly due to variation in sampling methods. There is thus a need for a standardized monitoring strategy that can be applied across mountain regions to assess distribution changes and community turnover of native and non-native plant species over space and time. Here, we present a conceptually intuitive and standardized protocol developed by the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN) to systematically quantify global patterns of native and non-native species distributions along elevation gradients and shifts arising from interactive effects of climate change and human disturbance. Usually repeated every five years, surveys consist of 20 sample sites located at equal elevation increments along three replicate roads per sampling region. At each site, three plots extend from the side of a mountain road into surrounding natural vegetation. The protocol has been successfully used in 18 regions worldwide from 2007 to present. Analyses of one point in time already generated some salient results, and revealed region-specific elevational patterns of native plant species richness, but a globally consistent elevational decline in non-native species richness. Non-native plants were also more abundant directly adjacent to road edges, suggesting that disturbed roadsides serve as a vector for invasions into mountains. From the upcoming analyses of time series even more exciting results especially about range shifts can be expected. Implementing the protocol in more mountain regions globally would help to generate a more complete picture of how global change alters species distributions. This would inform conservation policy in mountain ecosystems, where some conservation policies remain poorly implemented.

Effects of Soil Properties, Temperature and Disturbance on Diversity and Functional Composition of Plant Communities Along a Steep Elevational Gradient on Tenerife

“…Data collection took place in April and May 2018. All data and samples were retrieved from the permanent plots which were established in 2008 following the design of the standardized mountain road survey of the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN) (Bacaro et al, 2015;Haider et al, 2021). Thereby, three roads on the island's southern slopes were selected, spanning from the coast to the crater of Mt.…”

Mechanisms behind elevational plant species richness patterns revealed by a trait‐based approach

“…The project was conducted within the framework of the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN; http://www.mount ainin vasio ns.org), and we used the permanent plots established in 2008 according to the standardized protocol of the global MIREN survey (Arévalo et al, 2005;Haider et al, 2021). Fieldwork was carried out during the growing season from April to June 2018, along three roads on southwest, south, and southeast slopes, from close to the coast (24 m a.s.l.)…”

Plant-mycorrhizal interactions and their role in plant invasions in mountains

“…MIREN is an international network of researchers originally founded in 2005 with a focus on studying non-native plant invasions in mountains, and has over time expanded its scope to include general patterns of species redistribution in mountains under global change (Haider et al, 2021;Kueffer et al, 2014). The network's central aim is to understand how species distributions in mountains change over time, what the mechanisms and consequences of these changes are and ultimately to develop more effective ways to manage and protect mountain systems.…”

“…The network's central aim is to understand how species distributions in mountains change over time, what the mechanisms and consequences of these changes are and ultimately to develop more effective ways to manage and protect mountain systems. To this end, screening and monitoring of native and non-native vegetation is by now being conducted in over 20 mountain regions globally, covering all continents and an extensive range of climatic zones, and for varying length of time with the initial regions of the project having been repeatedly surveyed since 2007 (Haider et al, 2021). At the center of MIREN's activities is the monitoring of native and non-native plants along mountains roads following a standardized protocol to assess changes in distribution and community turnover over both space and time under the combined effects of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance (Haider et al, 2021).…”

“…Furthermore, many add-on projects have been developed over the years to supplement this core monitoring protocol including efforts to locally measure soil temperatures at high temporal resolutions (Lembrechts et al, 2020), determine plant functional traits (Kühn et al, 2021), assess pathogen distributions (Khaliq, 2019) or in the context of this thesis, measure mycorrhizal fungi and soil chemical properties. The resulting datasets consist of more than 2700 surveyed plots and over 100 000 observations of circa 5000 plant species as of 2021 (Haider et al, 2021). Both this existing dataset and the standardized MIREN protocol were crucial for the work carried out in this thesis.…”