FS 3.117: Low-latitude alpine ecosystems and nature-based solutions

Alpine ecosystems (AEs) are characterized the treeline marking their lower limit and the near absence of life defining their uppermost extent. They are sometimes referred to as high-elevation, tropical alpine, afro-alpine, high-Andean, nival, paramo and puna. AEs exhibit high yet variable vulnerability in biodiversity and functioning due to global changes, with regions experiencing greening and others browning. The threat to their ecosystem services has a variable influence on human societies, depending on whether they are inhabited or not. This session focuses on low-latitudes AEs (<35°, e.g. the Andes, East Africa, Himalayas, Atlas, Caucasus, Drakensberg) which face significant biodiversity and ecosystem service challenges alongside a lack of scientific knowledge. The session aims at documenting ecological changes in EAs and to explore how nature-based solutions (NbS) or non-intervention can reduce their vulnerability in rapidly changing environments. NbS refer here to ecological processes (e.g. nurse effects between plants) or traditional/ancestral human management practices that successfully reproduce ecological processes (e.g. mesotopographic modifications to improve water resources). We hypothesize that warming, melting glaciers, snow cover reduction and their interactions with changing land use patterns exert stress on key organisms in EAs. Under these conditions, key ecological processes, whether naturally occurring or applied through traditional knowledge, can enhance their sustainability. We invite contributions of all these types of studies, particularly those improving methodology, multidisciplinary approaches or from understudied mountain regions.