Response of Arctic Alpine Biota to Climate Change - Evidence from Polar Urals GLORIA Summits

Polar Urals as one of target regions of Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) comprises a suite of four summits, representing an elevation gradient of alpine vegetation patterns. The sampling areas cover the summits from the tops down to the 10 m contour line and are divided into eight sections. For each section, a complete list of vascular plants and herpetobiotic arthropods was collected and resurveyed. In the period from 2001 untill 2015, the species numbers steadily increased and the total surplus of vascular plants was up to 13 species on separate summit. A general decrease in the total cover of vascular plants and changes in percentage cover of the dominant species was recorded on the permanent plots; certain species of herbs decreased and certain shrub species increased. Among the dominant species of invertebrates, ground beetles and millipedes were replaced by click beetles and spiders. After 14 years the altitudinal index calculated for vascular plants gave an average upward movement of 13.6 m, that is more pronounced than in Northern and Southern Urals. The thermophilization of the alpine plant communities of Polar Urals was found equal to 9.3% of one vegetation belt. The temperature sums obtained from data loggers demonstrate the slight tendency of increase, especially for the lower summits.We are grateful to Dmitry Moiseev and Alexander Ermakov for their valuable help during the fieldwork. Thanks to the funding from Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR grant 15-05-05549 A) the recent resurvey, congress participation and data analysis became possible. The initial species and temperature data recording was supported through the EU FP-5 project GLORIA-Europe

Distribution patterns in the native vascular flora of Iceland.

The aim of our study was to reveal biogeographical patterns in the native vascular flora of Iceland and to define ecological factors responsible for these patterns. We analysed dataset of more than 500,000 records containing information on the occurrence of vascular plants. Analysis of ecological factors included climatic (derived from WORLDCLIM data), topographic (calculated from digital elevation model) and geological (bedrock characteristics) variables. Spherical k-means clustering and principal component analysis were used to detect biogeographical patterns and to study the factors responsible for them. We defined 10 biotic elements exhibiting different biogeographical patterns. We showed that climatic (temperature-related) and topographic variables were the most important factors contributing to the spatial patterns within the Icelandic vascular flora and that these patterns are almost completely independent of edaphic factors (bedrock type). Our study is the first one to analyse the biogeographical differentiation of the native vascular flora of Iceland