scholarly journals Common Patterns and Diverging Trajectories in Primary Succession of Plants in Eastern Alpine Glacier Forelands

Diversity ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Fickert
Keyword(s):  
Primary Succession ◽  
Ground Cover ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Central Alps ◽  
Successional Stage ◽  
Vegetation Development ◽  
Alpine Glacier ◽  
Glacier Terminus ◽  
Ground Cover Plant ◽  
Study Sites

This paper deals with the vegetation development in four glacier forelands, aligned along a distance of 250 km from West to East in the siliceous Eastern Central Alps. The study employs a chronosequence approach, which assumes a temporal sequence in vegetation development by spatially different sites regarding time since deglaciation. The chronosequences cover the area between Little Ice Age (LIA) maximum glacier extent around 1850, and the current glacier terminus. Despite some shortcomings, chronosequences allow the identification of general patterns of primary succession of plants as a function of site age and local environmental conditions, e.g., changes in species richness, ground cover, plant functional traits, and community structure. While there is no shortage of chronosequence studies in glacier forelands of the Alps, a straightforward comparison aimed at the deduction of general successional trajectories is tricky, due to different procedures of vegetation sampling and data analyses. The comparative examination by a standardized sampling and analyzing protocol of four glacier forelands in the Eastern Central Alps presented here proves the existence of several common patterns in primary succession, but also diverging successional trajectories from West to East. While the pioneer stage in all glacier forelands is similar both floristically and structurally, from the early successional stage onwards, differences increase, leading to different phases in the late successional stage, which is shrub dominated throughout in the westernmost study site, herb–grass–dwarfshrub dominated throughout in the easternmost study site, and divided into an earlier herb–grass–dwarfshrub phase and a later shrub phase in the two study sites in between.

scholarly journals Vegetation dynamics in Alpine glacier forelands tackled from space

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Fischer ◽  
Thomas Fickert ◽  
Gabriele Schwaizer ◽  
Gernot Patzelt ◽  
Günther Groß
Keyword(s):  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index ◽  
Ground Cover ◽  
Plant Succession ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Hazard Management ◽  
Alpine Glacier ◽  
Glacier Terminus ◽  
Vegetation Sampling

Abstract Monitoring of plant succession in glacier forelands has so far been restricted to field sampling. In this study, in situ vegetation sampling along a chronosequence between Little Ice Age (LIA) maximum extent and the recent glacier terminus at Jamtalferner in the Austrian Alps is compared to time series of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) calculated from 13 Landsat scenes (1985–2016). The glacier terminus positions at 16 dates between the LIA maximum and 2015 were analysed from historical maps, orthophotos and LiDAR images. We sampled plots of different ages since deglaciation, from very recent to approx. 150 years: after 100 years, roughly 80% of the ground is covered by plants and ground cover does not increase significantly thereafter. The number of species increases from 10–20 species on young sites to 40–50 species after 100 years. The NDVI increases with the time of exposure from a mean of 0.11 for 1985–1991 to 0.20 in 2009 and 0.27 in 2016. As the increase in ground cover is clearly reproduced by the NDVI (R² ground cover/NDVI 0.84) – even for sparsely vegetated areas –, we see a great potential of satellite-borne NDVI to perform regional characterizations of glacier forelands for hydrological, ecological and hazard management-related applications.

scholarly journals Little Ice Age climate reconstruction from ensemble reanalysis of Alpine glacier fluctuations

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 639-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Lüthi
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Macroscopic Model ◽  
Radiative Cooling ◽  
Equilibrium Line Altitude ◽  
Alpine Glacier ◽  
Mountain Glaciers ◽  
Glacier Terminus ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Alps

Abstract. Mountain glaciers sample a combination of climate fields – temperature, precipitation and radiation – by accumulation and melting of ice. Flow dynamics acts as a transfer function that maps volume changes to a length response of the glacier terminus. Long histories of terminus positions have been assembled for several glaciers in the Alps. Here I analyze terminus position histories from an ensemble of seven glaciers in the Alps with a macroscopic model of glacier dynamics to derive a history of glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA) for the time span 400–2010 C.E. The resulting climatic reconstruction depends only on records of glacier variations. The reconstructed ELA history is similar to recent reconstructions of Alpine summer temperature and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index, but bears little resemblance to reconstructed precipitation variations. Most reconstructed low-ELA periods coincide with large explosive volcano eruptions, hinting at a direct effect of volcanic radiative cooling on mass balance. The glacier advances during the LIA, and the retreat after 1860, can thus be mainly attributed to temperature and volcanic radiative cooling.

scholarly journals Little Ice Age climate reconstruction from ensemble reanalysis of Alpine glacier fluctuations

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 5147-5175 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Lüthi
Keyword(s):  
Little Ice Age ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Macroscopic Model ◽  
Volume Changes ◽  
Equilibrium Line Altitude ◽  
Alpine Glacier ◽  
Mountain Glaciers ◽  
Glacier Terminus ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Alps

Abstract. Mountain glaciers sample a combination of climate parameters – temperature, precipitation and radiation – by their rate of volume accumulation and loss. Flow dynamics acts as transfer function which maps volume changes to a length response of the glacier terminus. Long histories of terminus positions have been assembled for several glaciers in the Alps. Here I analyze terminus position histories from an ensemble of seven glaciers in the Alps with a macroscopic model of glacier dynamics to derive a history of glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA) for the time span 400–2010 C.E. The resulting climatic reconstruction depends only on records of glacier variations. The reconstructed ELA history is similar to recent reconstructions of Alpine summer temperature and Atlantic Meridional Oscillation (AMO) index. Most reconstructed low-ELA periods coincide with large explosive volcano eruptions, hinting to mass balance reduction by volcanic radiative cooling. The glacier advances during the LIA, and the retreat after 1860 are thus explained by temperature and volcanic cooling alone.

Functional diversity of the soil microflora in primary succession across two glacier forelands in the Central Alps

2003 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 685-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Tscherko ◽  
J. Rustemeier ◽  
A. Richter ◽  
W. Wanek ◽  
E. Kandeler
Keyword(s):  
Functional Diversity ◽  
Primary Succession ◽  
Soil Microflora ◽  
Central Alps

scholarly journals Climate reconstruction since the Little Ice Age by modelling Koryto glacier, Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia

2008 ◽  
Vol 54 (184) ◽  
pp. 125-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satoru Yamaguchi ◽  
Renji Naruse ◽  
Takayuki Shiraiwa
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Meteorological Data ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Kamchatka Peninsula ◽  
Winter Precipitation ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Equilibrium Line Altitude ◽  
Ice Cap ◽  
Glacier Terminus ◽  
Tree Ring Data

AbstractBased on the field data at Koryto glacier, Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia, we constructed a one-dimensional numerical glacier model which fits the behaviour of the glacier. The analysis of meteorological data from the nearby station suggests that the recent rapid retreat of the glacier since the mid-20th century is likely to be due to a decrease in winter precipitation. Using the geographical data of the glacier terminus variations from 1711 to 1930, we reconstructed the fluctuation in the equilibrium-line altitude by means of the glacier model. With summer temperatures inferred from tree-ring data, the model suggests that the winter precipitation from the mid-19th to the early 20th century was about 10% less than that at present. This trend is close to consistent with ice-core results from the nearby ice cap in the central Kamchatka Peninsula.

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