Shrubification (i.e., increasing shrub abundance) and thermophilisation (i.e., increasing dominance of warmth-demanding species) are among the most widely documented imprints of climate change on mountain ecosystems. Still, it remains insufficiently quantified how increasing shrub cover alters the near-ground microclimate and snow duration, and in turn, how this interacts with the climate-change responses of alpine plant communities. To this end, we leveraged 21 years of vegetation resampling data and soil temperature time-series from 576 permanent plots positioned on European mountaintops and covering the treeline ecotone up to the middle alpine belt. Snow duration decreased faster in plots with stronger macroclimate warming, which in turn led to a rise in minimum soil temperatures of 0.28°C per decade across all plots. Overall thermophilisation rates were higher in sheltered habitats with snow accumulation, while habitats with higher shrub cover showed faster loss of cold-adapted species. Further research is needed to disentangle the joint effects of shrubs, snow and microclimates, yielding more accurate projections of climate-induced plant community reshuffling in alpine habitats.

This study quantifies long-term changes in alpine plant communities of the Western Carpathians by resampling 117 historical relevés from the Western and Low Tatras after a 40–51-year interval. We analyzed species composition within seven vegetation classes spanning an altitudinal range of 1505–2184 m. Species were assigned an elevation econumber to assess vertical shifts at the community level using a cover-weighted elevation score. Relative frequency changes were also calculated for each species. We found a general increase in woody species, tall forbs, and grasses, accompanied by a decline in high-elevation specialists. These frequency changes were significantly correlated with elevation econumbers, confirming an expansion of species associated with lower altitudes. While upward migration signals were detected in six vegetation classes, one showed lower compositional turnover. Despite these differences, both the mean elevation score and species richness increased across all classes. A Generalized Additive Mixed Model identified changes in light availability and moisture as the strongest drivers of these upward shifts. Our findings suggest that current alpine vegetation dynamics are driven by biotic homogenization and the upward migration of competitive species, which is altering the unique character of these ecosystems.

Recent changes in alpine vegetation are often attributed to climate warming, particularly community composition shifts towards more warmth-associated species, or thermophilization. Here we assess the link between thermophilization and warming across 53 European mountain summits. We combine long-term macroclimatic and microclimatic temperature time series with vegetation surveys in 724 permanent plots, monitored over 21 years, to evaluate a possible thermophilization signal and relate it to rates of change in 10 temperature metrics. We find evidence of both thermophilization of alpine plant communities and an increase in temperatures. However, although these two trends are related when averaged across mountain regions, their relationship is weak at the individual plot scale, especially when considering microclimatic temperature metrics. Instead, substrate conditions and particularly the availability of thermophilic colonizers in the surrounding vegetation have a major influence on plot-level thermophilization rates. We conclude that the response of plant communities to climate change strongly depends on the abiotic and biotic context, and intensified monitoring efforts are needed to reduce the resulting uncertainties.

Shrubs are expanding across the cold ecosystems of our planet with potentially profound consequences for their biodiversity and functioning. However, evidence is still strongly biased towards the Arctic tundra, while a large-scale assessment of shrub expansion in alpine areas above the elevational treeline is missing so far. Here we quantified shrub cover changes over the past two decades in 576 permanent plots of 1 m2 spread across the alpine vegetation belt of Europe's major mountain chains. Total shrub cover clearly increased in the plots with an average rate of about 2.6% per m2 per decade (95% CI = 1.9%-3.4%), and this expansion was more pronounced for evergreen (2.0% per m2 per decade, CI = 1.3%-2.7%) than for deciduous species (1.7% per m2 per decade, CI = 0.9%-2.4%). The magnitude of individual species' cover shifts was positively associated with their plant height, but negatively with their leaf nitrogen content and light affinity. In sum, we show that shrub expansion is a widespread phenomenon also in the alpine zone of European mountains, with potentially far-reaching consequences for alpine plant dynamics, soil microclimates, snow patterns, carbon cycling, food chains and livelihoods.

Allotment gardens have been a permanent and dynamic part of the urban socio-economic and ecological system; however, they are currently facing intense urbanization or gradual neglect. This paper characterizes the changes in landscape structure and agricultural land use in the areas of the current allotment gardens from the mid-twentieth century to 2022. Our research finds that the first allotment gardens in Bratislava began to be established at the end of the nineteenth century. The greatest boom in gardening occurred in the 1970s, following a government resolution that ordered municipalities and towns to include areas for allotment gardens in their land use plans. Based on available spatial and statistical data, we compared land use in 1949 with land use in 2022 using the 3rd level of CORINE Land Cover Classification (CLC). Based on our criteria, we selected areas that can currently be considered allotment gardens. Selected allotments cover an area of 915 ha and represent 2.5

This study is focussed on the impact of avalanches on vegetation in the High and Western Tatra Mountains by comparing communities in different avalanche path zones: transport (alpha and beta/gamma types) and deposition zones. Using 30 phytocoenological relevés, we conducted a permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) to examine community composition, followed by non-metric multidimensional scaling and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to analyse species richness, diversity, and Ellenberg indicator values. Results indicate that the highest species richness and diversity occur in the alpha-type transport zones, characterized by higher soil reaction and nutrient availability. In contrast, beta/gamma transport zones display lower species richness, dominated by chionophobic and cold-tolerant species in nutrient-poor, acidic conditions. Deposition zones, influenced by prolonged snow cover, exhibit lower diversity and uneven species distribution, often dominated by a few well-adapted species. This study highlights the spatial heterogeneity of vegetation composition in avalanche-prone areas and the role of environmental factors in maintaining biodiversity in alpine ecosystems.

This article is focused on the specific vegetation, which has formed from the floodplain forests on the aggradation mound (elevated sediment deposition) along the original Danube river in Slovakia in the part affected by Gabčíkovo waterworks that was put in operation in 1992. As a result of water regime changes, when a major part of the Danube water flow was redirected to the Gabčíkovo hydroelectric power plant, original floodplain forests on the aggradation mound began to suffer from a water deficit, which is also supported by shallow soils formed mostly on the gravel sediments with limited capillary rise of groundwater. It has triggered successional processes leading to the degradation of forest with changes in all layers. To identify these changes and development trends, we analyzed vegetation data from 2002, 2012, and 2022. The results indicate that the process of secondary succession of the original floodplain forest continues. This includes mainly an increase in the number of species, especially those typical for grasslands and synanthropic habitats. From an environmental point of view, the spread of some invasive species is striking. Ordination method (canonical-correlation analysis [CCA]) confirmed light, moisture, number of species, and Shannon–Wiener index as the main factors determining relevés’ variability.

Nardus stricta dominated grassland is a specific habitat occurring on the nutrient-poor soils. Its large areas were formed as a result of livestock grazing. However, landscape management underwent significant changes over the last decades including grazing cessation. This triggered successional processes leading to considerable changes in floristic composition reported from numerous European regions. We focused on this phenomenon in the Western Carpathian high mountains, where the issue was not studied sufficiently. Our research, based on pairwise comparison of 19 historical and recent phytocoenological relevés, confirmed changes here. These include (i) decrease in cover of some diagnostic species of Nardetea strictae class, especially Nardus stricta , (ii) increase in competitively strong species with their high biomass productivity, (iii) shift in floristic composition indicating conversion of Nardion strictae vegetation into other communities, especially those of Loiseleurio-Vaccinietea class, (iv) increase in Shannon-Wiener index values and (v) enrichment of originally oligotrophic grasslands with some nutrient-demanding species, mainly at lower altitudes and decrease in light-demanding species.

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1‐km 2 resolution for 0–5 and 5–15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e. offset) between in situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1‐km 2 pixels (summarized from 8519 unique temperature sensors) across all the world's major terrestrial biomes, and coarse‐grained air temperature estimates from ERA5‐Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (−0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome‐specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near‐surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil‐related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications.

The perception of the landscape by society is becoming an integral part of many studies in terms of the quality of the living environment, sport and recreation and building and developing social relationships. To evaluate the perception and appreciation of individual landscape types by society, we used an online questionnaire as a form of sociological survey. We used the statistical method of non-metric multidimensional scaling NMDS in R package to determine the variability of responses in relation to respondents. The relationship between demographic factors and landscape perception and landscape type preferences was evaluated. The results of multidimensional scaling show a strong relationship between young men and a preference for recreation over agro-tourism. The middle generation with university education looks more frequently for cultural monuments. University-educated middle-aged men perceive the natural landscape as degraded and endangered, and middle-aged men with secondary education understand the need for the protection of traditional agricultural landscapes. It is important to integrate people's preferences and needs into the landscape planning and decision-making processes, so that they can contribute to the creation of development plans and other strategic documents.

Species turnover is ubiquitous. However, it remains unknown whether certain types of species are consistently gained or lost across different habitats. Here, we analysed the trajectories of 1827 plant species over time intervals of up to 78 years at 141 sites across mountain summits, forests, and lowland grasslands in Europe. We found, albeit with relatively small effect sizes, displacements of smaller- by larger-ranged species across habitats. Communities shifted in parallel towards more nutrient-demanding species, with species from nutrient-rich habitats having larger ranges. Because these species are typically strong competitors, declines of smaller-ranged species could reflect not only abiotic drivers of global change, but also biotic pressure from increased competition. The ubiquitous component of turnover based on species range size we found here may partially reconcile findings of no net loss in local diversity with global species loss, and link community-scale turnover to macroecological processes such as biotic homogenisation.

The historical agrarian landforms (AL) represent man-made features that alter the hydrological process on cultivated hillslopes. Soil water content (SWC) and its spatial and temporal variability represent an important state indicator for understanding of these processes. In order to assess the differences between individual AL in terms of SWC stability, continuous soil moisture measurements at five different monitoring localities characterized by a specific combination of AL and environmental factors were performed. Temporal SWC stability was evaluated using mean relative difference (MRD) and its standard deviation (SDRD). Differences in mean SWC and MRD values demonstrated the difference between saturated inner part of the AL and external parts such as terraced slopes and mounds, soil depths, and slope positions. In order to analyze the relationship between SWC and environmental variables, the methods of constrained ordination were applied. The most influential factors that regulate SWC variability during the periods of rain were identified as: stone content, sand fraction content, slope orientation, type of agrarian landform, and its orientation against the contour lines. Results also pointed to the fact that different factors predominate among individual localities and, therefore, SWC variability reflects the effect of combination of various environmental factors rather than effect of single parameter. Besides the improved understanding of SWC variability, our results also highlight the importance of AL in regulating the hydrological processes at historical agricultural landscape of the West Carpathian region.

While climatic research about treeline has a long history, the climatic conditions corresponding to the upper limit of closed alpine grasslands remain poorly understood. Here, we propose a climatic definition for this limit, the ‘grassline’, in analogy to the treeline, which is based on the growing season length and the soil temperature. Eighty-seven mountain summits across ten European mountain ranges, covering three biomes (boreal, temperate, Mediterranean), were inventoried as part of the GLORIA project. Vascular plant cover was estimated visually in 326 plots of 1 × 1 m. Soil temperatures were measured in situ for 2–7 years, from which the length of the growing season and mean temperature were derived. The climatic conditions corresponding to 40% plant cover were defined as the thresholds for alpine grassland. Closed vegetation was present in locations with a mean growing season soil temperature warmer than 4.9 °C, or a minimal growing season length of 85 days, with the growing season defined as encompassing days with daily mean ≥ 1 °C. Hence, the upper limit of closed grasslands was associated with a mean soil temperature close to that previously observed at the treeline, and in accordance with physiological thresholds to growth in vascular plants. In contrast to trees, whose canopy temperature is coupled with air temperature, small-stature alpine plants benefit from the soil warmed by solar radiation and consequently, they can grow at higher elevations. Since substrate stability is necessary for grasslands to occur at their climatic limit, the grassline rarely appears as a distinct linear feature.

Vegetation at timberline responses sensitively to any environment change. Climate change along with land use changes, mainly grazing cessation, inspired us to study this question in the Tatra Mts, which includes the highest parts of the Western Carpathians. Here, we focused on expansion of phanerophytes, which took place over the last decades. Our research was based on resampling of historical phytocoenological relevés and comparing aerial images from 1973 to 2015. Our finding can be concluded as follows: (i) we confirmed increased frequency of phanerophytes, mainly Pinus mugo, to a lesser extent Juniperus communis and Picea abies in current dataset, (ii) Juncion trifidi grasslands and dwarf shrub communities dominated by ericaceous species are the most susceptible communities to the expansion of phanerophytes, especially those located close to the stands of trees and shrubs, (iii) the grasslands facing phanerophyte expansion are more light-demanding than others, (iv) phanerophytes significantly affect the light and temperature conditions on the sites, however, this influence does not markedly differ from the influence of tall grasses and chamaephytes, (v) area of grasslands was reduced by more than 22%, (vi) on former grasslands are mainly expanded Pinus mugo dominated shrub, (vii) transformations from grasslands into tree and shrub stands take place mainly on the south-facing slopes with an inclination of 30–40°, with the average annual insolation of 1 600–1 800 kWh/m2, (viii) the landscape structure has changed the least at altitude above 1 800 m.

Questions: Long-term programs monitoring the impact of climate change on alpine vegetation necessarily involve changing observers. We aim at quantifying observer errors and ask if the signal of alpine vegetation transformation due to climate change exceeds pseudo-changes caused by observer errors. Location: Two mountain regions in the Alps, Schrankogel and Hochschwab (both Austria), and one in the High Tatra Mountains (Slovakia). Methods: Vascular plant species presence and cover were recorded on 10-12 1-m(2) plots by 13-14 observers per site. Observer errors were calculated as species turnover, and deviations of species cover and the plot thermic vegetation indicator (which is correlated with temperature) from the mean over all observers. Observer errors in estimating species cover were split into a random and systematic part. The influence of plot and species characteristics on observer errors was investigated using (generalized) linear mixed-effect models. Changes over time from three surveys in species turnover, cover and the thermic vegetation indicator were related to the amount of observer error using a bootstrap approach. Results: Species cover was the most influential factor affecting observer errors in recording species lists and in species cover estimation. Plot attributes and observer identity had a weak but significant influence on errors in the thermic vegetation indicator. Systematic errors in estimating species cover were <= 5%. Changes over time in estimating species cover, as well as in species turnover and the thermic vegetation indicator exceeded observer errors in all cases where the observation period was >= 10 years. Conclusions: The thermic vegetation indicator, which combines species composition and cover with species' elevational distributions, provides a reliable estimate of warming-related vegetation changes. Our results underline the importance of long-term monitoring and long observation periods, which enable us to account for short-term fluctuations and observer errors alike.

Current analyses and predictions of spatially explicit patterns and processes in ecology most often rely on climate data interpolated from standardized weather stations. This interpolated climate data represents long-term average thermal conditions at coarse spatial resolutions only. Hence, many climate-forcing factors that operate at fine spatiotemporal resolutions are overlooked. This is particularly important in relation to effects of observation height (e.g. vegetation, snow and soil characteristics) and in habitats varying in their exposure to radiation, moisture and wind (e.g. topography, radiative forcing or cold-air pooling). Since organisms living close to the ground relate more strongly to these microclimatic conditions than to free-air temperatures, microclimatic ground and near-surface data are needed to provide realistic forecasts of the fate of such organisms under anthropogenic climate change, as well as of the functioning of the ecosystems they live in. To fill this critical gap, we highlight a call for temperature time series submissions to SoilTemp, a geospatial database initiative compiling soil and near-surface temperature data from all over the world. Currently, this database contains time series from 7,538 temperature sensors from 51 countries across all key biomes. The database will pave the way toward an improved global understanding of microclimate and bridge the gap between the available climate data and the climate at fine spatiotemporal resolutions relevant to most organisms and ecosystem processes.

Abstract This article is focused on the site conditions of the cultural mountainous West Carpathian landscape (Liptovská Teplička village, Central Slovakia) affected by historical agricultural land use, which also included relief and soil modifications leading to the formation of specific mosaic of agrarian landforms – AL (narrow productive plots separated by balks having character of terraces and mounds). It is based on a pair comparison of sites located side by side; the former is located on the productive plot (former arable land), while the latter is a balk. The pairs were selected in order to capture the representative sample of AL within diverse natural conditions, land cover and management. In order to assess the differences between individual AL, continuous soil water content (SWC) measurements using EC-5 soil moisture sensors were performed. The sensors provided continuous measurements of hourly soil volumetric water content rates (VWC, m3/m3). The data were recorded from April 2018 until December 2018. These data were used to assess individual monitoring localities in terms of SWC temporal stability. Furthermore, at each sampling location, an analysis of soil organic matter content, soil texture and stone content was performed. This research was also supplemented by indirect estimation of some site conditions based on phytoindication method using Ellenberg’s indicator values for moisture, soil reaction, nutrient content, continentality, temperature and light. Our results can be concluded as follows: i) the SWC temporal stability assessment revealed the clear effect of AL, however, it was difficult to identify which factors associated with AL typology were the most significant. The high differences between similar AL types revealed the fact that land use, management and rock content (both at productive plots and balks) affect the SWC temporal stability rather than AL typology and their orientation within the slope, ii) phytoindication method did not show statistically significant differences in site conditions between productive plots and balks, despite the fact that there were some significant differences confirmed in species composition, especially between productive plots and dolomite mounds. These differences are related to a higher number of calciphilous and termophilous species preferring ecotones and forests in mounds and group of mesophilous meadow species in productive plots. In summary, it seems that identified differences in both SWC temporal stability and floristic composition between productive plots and balks reflect the management regime rather than site conditions and formation of mounds represents relatively the most significant impact of traditional agricultural land use on the local environment.

Snowbed vegetation is one of the most sensitive alpine vegetation type to the climate change, because shortened period of snow cover has essential impact on the snowbed environment. We focus on its changes in the Western Tatras, which is a part of the Western Carpathians (Slovakia). The assessment of changes in snowbed vegetation is based on the method of pair comparison. In 2016–2018, we resampled 21 historical phytocoenological relevés of Festucion picturatae and Salicion herbaceae alliances from 1974 and 1976. Historical data include 45 species, while recent data include 50 species. We observed a decrease in the frequency of species characteristic for snowbeds and, on the other hand, an increase in that for strong competitors, especially grasses and small shrubs from adjacent habitats. According to Ellenberg’s ecological indices, there is some increase in temperature and decrease in light ecological factors in snowbed habitats. In S. herbaceae data, a statistically significant increase in the average species number was observed with new species that penetrated from the adjacent habitats. Changes in species composition between historical and recent data are confirmed by Non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) ordination diagram. Linear mixed-effect models showed big variability in factors that have impact on phytodiversity; nevertheless, temperature is the most significant factor.

This paper examines changes in alpine vegetation over 50 years in the Western Tatras part of the Western Carpathians Mountains in Slovakia. We focus on the following most widespread vegetation types: subalpine to subnival grasslands (alliance Juncion trifidi Krajina 1933), snowbed vegetation (alliance Festucion picturatae Krajina 1933) and dwarf-shrub vegetation (alliances Loiseleurio-Vaccinion Br.-Bl. in Br.-Bl. et Jenny 1926 and Vaccinion myrtilli Krajina 1933). The historical 1971–1977 sampling dataset was re-sampled in 2016–2017 and our research is based on a comparison of 40 pairs of these relevés. Herein, we studied (i) changes in species frequencies; (ii) changes in phytodiversity and site conditions using estimates of Ellenberg’s eco-indices and (iii) comparison of historical and current relevés over time using the nonmetric multidimensional scaling gradient analysis (NMDS) ordination method. The frequency curves reveal differences; especially in the most frequent species at 37.5−80%, which reach higher values in the current data. The higher 7.5−25% value of medium-frequent species in the historical relevés indicates progressive homogenisation of the examined vegetation. In addition, the Shannon-Wiener index of individual vegetation types revealed no significant differences in diversity or average number of species. The historical relevés included 75 species while 74 were confirmed in the current data. Statistically significant differences were determined in light factor for all three vegetation groups. This was due to the retreat of some light-demanding species. While NMDS indicated changes in Festucion and Vaccinion relevés over time, the Juncion group relevés did not follow this trend, thus confirming their high stability. The observed changes between current and historical data are attributed to changes in climate and altered land use with the cessation of grazing.