查看文章

Mountains cover 12.3 percent of the terrestrial area outside Antarctica (Table 17.1; Körner et al. 2011) and harbor a proportionally higher amount of biodiversity than lowlands, including several biodiversity hotspots, such as tropical cloud forests (Dimitrov et al. 2012) or endemicrich alpine grasslands (Engler et al. 2011). High-elevation habitats present particular ecological challenges for life (eg, low temperatures, short windows for reproduction, fluctuation in food availability, high solar radiation, hypoxia), restricting colonization to adapted life forms (Scridel 2014). Mountain regions seem also to be warming at a higher rate than other regions (Rangwala et al. 2013), which makes these ecosystems quite sensitive to natural and anthropogenic impacts (eg, climate, fires, land-use changes; Beniston 1994; Beniston et al. 1997).

Mountains were identified early as sensitive to climate change (eg, Beniston 1994; Guisan et …