Impacts and Risks of Global Change - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 41

These considerations are the basis for the monitoring network GLORIA,
the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments. It is
established as a long-term programme and implemented across the world.
It focuses on the well-documented indicatory value of alpine and nival
plants and plant communities. The major results to date are:
Even the basic surveys in the GLORIA target regions provide new
biogeographical and ecological findings. Some GLORIA teams have
published their data and all data sets are compiled in the network's central
database (see www.gloria.ac.at). These data represent a reliable record on
alpine species for the selected summit areas from fi ve continents. In remote
or less studied mountain regions, e.g., in the Andes of southern Peru or in the
high mountains of the Iran, hitherto unknown species may be discovered.
The data of the pilot project GLORIA Europe confi rm the general
hypothesis that phytodiversity (only vascular plants) at lower latitudes is
higher than at high latitudes. The GLORIA summit fl oras at mid-latitudes
(Alps, Pyrenees, Caucasus) deviate from this pattern by being the species-
richest. The Mediterranean mountains (Sierra Nevada, Apennines, Lefka Ori
[Crete]) are home to the most endemic species. For the target regions Sierra
Nevada (Spain) and Hochschwab (Austria), Pauli et al. (2003) found that the
proportion of endemic species increases with altitude. A generally warmer
and drier climate (Sierra Nevada) should eventually lead to the loss of this
unique mountain fl ora. Salick et al. (2009) and Grabherr (2009) estimate
that this is also true for medicinal plants. In the Himalayas, Tibetan doctors
use 76% of alpine species for medicinal purposes. However, Gottfried et al.
(1999) have shown through spatially explicated modelling that microrefugia
may support a longer survival. Some vegetation types, such as subalpine
knee timber of Pinus mugo in the Limestone Alps, may be highly resistant
against warming-driven impacts even in the longer term (100 years and
more) (Dullinger et al. 2004).
The modern view of the altitudinal zonation of high mountain areas,
which Humboldt already presented in a comparative approach, is a
sequence of vegetation belts that are connected through narrower ecotones
(Nagy and Grabherr 2009). By far the most conspicuous ecotone is the
transition between closed montane forest and the treeless alpine zone. So
far, attempts to describe this treeline ecotone in a general way have failed
owing to the high level of individual forms dependent on the particular
mountain area (Holtmeier 2009). Nor has the debate about the ecological
causes of the tree line been concluded (Körner 2003, Butler et al. 2009).
Less distinct than the tree line ecotone is the transition from the alpine to
the nival zone. Some authors understand this zone where the closed alpine
grassland disintegrates into an open patchy vegetation as an altitudinal
belt, the subnival zone; others see it as an alpine-nival ecotone (Nagy and
Grabherr 2009). In the nival zone, the number of species is decreasing