Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations
Human-induced climate- and land-use change have been affecting biogeographical and biodiversity patterns for the past two centuries all over the globe, resulting in increased extinction and biotic homogenization rates. High mountain ecosystems are more sensitive to these changes, which have led to p...
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ftmdpi:oai:mdpi.com:/2071-1050/13/24/13778/ 2023-08-20T04:03:41+02:00 Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations Konstantinos Kougioumoutzis Ioannis P. Kokkoris Arne Strid Thomas Raus Panayotis Dimopoulos agris 2021-12-14 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413778 EN eng Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Sustainability, Biodiversity and Conservation https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su132413778 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Sustainability; Volume 13; Issue 24; Pages: 13778 biodiversity conservation extinction risk GIS analysis Greece Mediterranean flora species distribution modelling Text 2021 ftmdpi https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413778 2023-08-01T03:32:44Z Human-induced climate- and land-use change have been affecting biogeographical and biodiversity patterns for the past two centuries all over the globe, resulting in increased extinction and biotic homogenization rates. High mountain ecosystems are more sensitive to these changes, which have led to physiological and phenological shifts, as well as to ecosystem processes’ deformation. Glacial relicts, such as arctic-alpine taxa, are sensitive indicators of the effects of global warming and their rear-edge populations could include warm-adapted genotypes that might prove—conservation-wise—useful in an era of unprecedented climate regimes. Despite the ongoing thermophilization in European and Mediterranean summits, it still remains unknown how past and future climate-change might affect the distributional patterns of the glacial relict, arctic-alpine taxa occurring in Greece, their European southernmost distributional limit. Using species distribution models, we investigated the impacts of past and future climate changes on the arctic-alpine taxa occurring in Greece and identified the areas comprising arctic-alpine biodiversity hotspots in Greece. Most of these species will be faced with severe range reductions in the near future, despite their innate resilience to a multitude of threats, while the species richness hotspots will experience both altitudinal and latitudinal shifts. Being long-lived perennials means that there might be an extinction-debt present in these taxa, and a prolonged stability phase could be masking the deleterious effects of climate change on them. Several ex situ conservation measures (e.g., seed collection, population augmentation) should be taken to preserve the southernmost populations of these rare arctic-alpine taxa and a better understanding of their population genetics is urgently needed. Text Arctic Climate change Global warming MDPI Open Access Publishing Arctic Sustainability 13 24 13778 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
MDPI Open Access Publishing |
op_collection_id |
ftmdpi |
language |
English |
topic |
biodiversity conservation extinction risk GIS analysis Greece Mediterranean flora species distribution modelling |
spellingShingle |
biodiversity conservation extinction risk GIS analysis Greece Mediterranean flora species distribution modelling Konstantinos Kougioumoutzis Ioannis P. Kokkoris Arne Strid Thomas Raus Panayotis Dimopoulos Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations |
topic_facet |
biodiversity conservation extinction risk GIS analysis Greece Mediterranean flora species distribution modelling |
description |
Human-induced climate- and land-use change have been affecting biogeographical and biodiversity patterns for the past two centuries all over the globe, resulting in increased extinction and biotic homogenization rates. High mountain ecosystems are more sensitive to these changes, which have led to physiological and phenological shifts, as well as to ecosystem processes’ deformation. Glacial relicts, such as arctic-alpine taxa, are sensitive indicators of the effects of global warming and their rear-edge populations could include warm-adapted genotypes that might prove—conservation-wise—useful in an era of unprecedented climate regimes. Despite the ongoing thermophilization in European and Mediterranean summits, it still remains unknown how past and future climate-change might affect the distributional patterns of the glacial relict, arctic-alpine taxa occurring in Greece, their European southernmost distributional limit. Using species distribution models, we investigated the impacts of past and future climate changes on the arctic-alpine taxa occurring in Greece and identified the areas comprising arctic-alpine biodiversity hotspots in Greece. Most of these species will be faced with severe range reductions in the near future, despite their innate resilience to a multitude of threats, while the species richness hotspots will experience both altitudinal and latitudinal shifts. Being long-lived perennials means that there might be an extinction-debt present in these taxa, and a prolonged stability phase could be masking the deleterious effects of climate change on them. Several ex situ conservation measures (e.g., seed collection, population augmentation) should be taken to preserve the southernmost populations of these rare arctic-alpine taxa and a better understanding of their population genetics is urgently needed. |
format |
Text |
author |
Konstantinos Kougioumoutzis Ioannis P. Kokkoris Arne Strid Thomas Raus Panayotis Dimopoulos |
author_facet |
Konstantinos Kougioumoutzis Ioannis P. Kokkoris Arne Strid Thomas Raus Panayotis Dimopoulos |
author_sort |
Konstantinos Kougioumoutzis |
title |
Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations |
title_short |
Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations |
title_full |
Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations |
title_fullStr |
Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations |
title_full_unstemmed |
Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations |
title_sort |
climate-change impacts on the southernmost mediterranean arctic-alpine plant populations |
publisher |
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413778 |
op_coverage |
agris |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Climate change Global warming |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change Global warming |
op_source |
Sustainability; Volume 13; Issue 24; Pages: 13778 |
op_relation |
Sustainability, Biodiversity and Conservation https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su132413778 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413778 |
container_title |
Sustainability |
container_volume |
13 |
container_issue |
24 |
container_start_page |
13778 |
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