TY - JOUR A1 - Schwarzer, Christian A1 - Heinken, Thilo A1 - Luthardt, Vera A1 - Joshi, Jasmin Radha T1 - Latitudinal shifts in species interactions interfere with resistance of southern but not of northern bog-plant communities to experimental climate change JF - The journal of ecology N2 - The persistence of species under changed climatic conditions depends on adaptations and plastic responses to these conditions and on interactions with their local plant community resulting in direct and indirect effects of changed climatic conditions. Populations at species' range margins may be especially crucial in containing a gene pool comprising adaptations to extreme climatic conditions. Many species of northern European bog ecosystems reach their southern lowland range limit in central Europe. In a common-garden experiment, we experimentally assessed the impact of projected climatic changes on five bog-plant species (including peat moss Sphagnum magellanicum) sampled along a latitudinal gradient of 1400km from Scandinavia to the marginal lowland populations in Germany. Populations were cultivated in monocultures and in experimental communities composed of all five species from their local community, and exposed to five combinations of three climate treatments (warming, fluctuating water-tables, fertilization) in a southern common garden. Whereas most monocultures showed a decreasing biomass production from southern to northern origins under southern environmental conditions, in the experimental mixed-species communities, an increasing biomass production towards northern communities was observed together with a shift in interspecific interactions along the latitudinal gradient. While negative dominance effects prevailed in southern communities, higher net biodiversity effects were observed in northern subarctic communities. The combined effects of climate treatments increased biomass production in monocultures of most origins. In communities, however, overall the treatments did not result in significantly changed biomass production. Among individual treatments, water-table fluctuations caused a significant decrease in biomass production, but only in southern communities, indicating higher vulnerability to changed climatic conditions. Here, negative effects of climate treatments on graminoids were not compensated by the slightly increased growth of peat moss that benefited from interspecific interactions only in northern communities.Synthesis. We conclude that shifting interactions within multispecies communities caused pronounced responses to changed climatic conditions in wetland communities of temperate southern marginal, but not of northern subarctic origin. Therefore, future models investigating the impacts of climate change on plant communities should consider geographical variation in species interactions an important factor influencing community responses to changed climatic conditions. KW - additive partitioning of biodiversity effects KW - biodiversity KW - ecosystem services KW - ecosystem stability KW - intraspecific divergence KW - multifactorial environmental change KW - nitrogen deposition KW - northern peatlands KW - Sphagnum magellanicum KW - wetland ecosystems Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.12158 SN - 0022-0477 SN - 1365-2745 VL - 101 IS - 6 SP - 1484 EP - 1497 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Huber, Robert A1 - Rigling, Andreas A1 - Bebi, Peter A1 - Brand, Fridolin Simon A1 - Briner, Simon A1 - Buttler, Alexandre A1 - Elkin, Che A1 - Gillet, Francois A1 - Gret-Regamey, Adrienne A1 - Hirschi, Christian A1 - Lischke, Heike A1 - Scholz, Roland Werner A1 - Seidl, Roman A1 - Spiegelberger, Thomas A1 - Walz, Ariane A1 - Zimmermann, Willi A1 - Bugmann, Harald T1 - Sustainable land use in Mountain Regions under global change synthesis across scales and disciplines JF - Ecology and society : a journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability N2 - Mountain regions provide essential ecosystem goods and services (EGS) for both mountain dwellers and people living outside these areas. Global change endangers the capacity of mountain ecosystems to provide key services. The Mountland project focused on three case study regions in the Swiss Alps and aimed to propose land-use practices and alternative policy solutions to ensure the provision of key EGS under climate and land-use changes. We summarized and synthesized the results of the project and provide insights into the ecological, socioeconomic, and political processes relevant for analyzing global change impacts on a European mountain region. In Mountland, an integrative approach was applied, combining methods from economics and the political and natural sciences to analyze ecosystem functioning from a holistic human-environment system perspective. In general, surveys, experiments, and model results revealed that climate and socioeconomic changes are likely to increase the vulnerability of the EGS analyzed. We regard the following key characteristics of coupled human-environment systems as central to our case study areas in mountain regions: thresholds, heterogeneity, trade-offs, and feedback. Our results suggest that the institutional framework should be strengthened in a way that better addresses these characteristics, allowing for (1) more integrative approaches, (2) a more network-oriented management and steering of political processes that integrate local stakeholders, and (3) enhanced capacity building to decrease the identified vulnerability as central elements in the policy process. Further, to maintain and support the future provision of EGS in mountain regions, policy making should also focus on project-oriented, cross-sectoral policies and spatial planning as a coordination instrument for land use in general. KW - adaptive management KW - climate change KW - ecosystem services KW - experiments KW - interdisciplinary research KW - land-use change KW - modeling KW - transdisciplinary research Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05499-180336 SN - 1708-3087 VL - 18 IS - 3 PB - Resilience Alliance CY - Wolfville ER -