Assigned Session: FS 3.166: Alpine microclimates, biodiversity, and climate change
How does it feel on Alpine summits when you are a bryophyte?
Abstract ID: 3.9786 | Accepted as Poster | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA
Kelly Theunissen (0)
Kelly Theunissen ((0) University of Liège, Chemin de la Vallée 4, B22 botanique, 4000, Liege, , BE)
(0) University of Liège, Chemin de la Vallée 4, B22 botanique, 4000, Liege, , BE
Mounting evidence points to the crucial need for microclimatic data for an enhanced understanding of species distributions and response to climate change. The issue of scale and associated climatic data is intimately associated with the size of the organisms. Small-sized organisms often occur in micro-environments wherein they experience microclimatic conditions that drastically differ from the regional macroclimate. Here, we determine the extent to which the buffering effect of the microtopography and vegetation effectively drives variations in alpine bryophyte community composition. Temperature and relative humidity data as well as bryophyte species composition were recorded at 84 plots on two Alpine summits. We modelled the relationship between macro-and microclimates and determined the contribution of high-resolution topographic and remote-sensing data to the slope of the macro-microclimate relationship at each sensor, which characterises the buffering effect of the environment. Finally, we quantified the predicting power of the buffering effect on the variation in species composition among bryophyte communities.
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