Abstract
In IPCC´s Third Assessment Report (2001), three groups of alpine ecosystems in Europe´s mountain areas were highlighted as particularly sensitive to climate change: mid-alpine snowbeds, high-alpine fellfields, and tussock tundra, the latter relying on permafrost to be sustainable. In addition, IPCC points out that the entire alpine heathland in Scandinavia is threatened by uphill advancement of the mountain birch, an already ongoing process. The aim of the project is to assess the sustainability of alpine landscapes in the northern Scandes, utilizing the above ecosystems and its plant species as indicators or "early warning systems" for detecting climate change impacts. Fieldwork will be conducted in the Latnjajaure catchment (mid- and high alpine) in N Swedish Lapland. My research group has been working at the Latnjajaure Field Station since 1990, and we now possess a plethora of long-term data sets on climate, snow-melt, plant ecology, etc. Our efforts in landscape ecology has generated a detailed GIS-based vegetation map of the entire catchment. The project addresses aspects of biodiversity across scales in space, time, and function. Climate change will not only bring about changes in species composition; we expect drastic changes in ecosystem diversity within landscapes. This will alter the properties of the alpine tundra, with consequences for sustainable land-use and biodiversity conservation. Results will be incorporated in IPCC´s next assessment report.
Sweden