The Alps Vegetation Database - a geo-referenced community-level archive of all terrestrial plants occurring in the Alps

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_ABEEFD451701
Type
A part of a book
Publication sub-type
Chapter: chapter ou part
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
The Alps Vegetation Database - a geo-referenced community-level archive of all terrestrial plants occurring in the Alps
Title of the book
Vegetation databases for the 21st century
Author(s)
Lenoir  J., Svenning  J.-C., Dullinger  S., Pauli  H., Willner  W., Guisan  A., Vittoz  P., Wohlgemuth  T., Zimmermann  N.E., Gégout  J.-C.
Publisher
Biodiversity & Ecology 4: 331-332
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2012
Editor
Dengler  J., Oldeland  J., Jansen  F., Chytrý  M., Ewald  J., Finckh  M., Glöckler  F., Lopez-Gonzalez G., Peet R. K., Schaminée  J.H.J.
Language
english
Abstract
Mountain ranges are biodiversity hotspots worldwide and provide refuge to many organisms under contemporary climate change. Gathering field information on mountain biodiversity over time is of primary importance to understand the response of biotic communities to climate changes. For plants, several long-term observation sites and networks of mountain biodiversity are emerging worldwide to gather field data and monitor altitudinal range shifts and community composition changes under contemporary climate change. Most of these monitoring sites, however, focus on alpine ecosystems and mountain summits, such as the global observation research initiative in alpine environments (GLORIA). Here we describe the Alps Vegetation Database, a comprehensive communitylevel archive (GIVD ID EU-00-014) which aims at compiling all available geo-referenced vegetation plots from lowland forests to alpine grasslands across the greatest mountain range in Europe: the Alps. This research initiative was funded between 2008 and 2011 by the Danish Council for Independent Research and was part of a larger project to compare cross-scale plant community structure between the Alps and the Scandes. The Alps Vegetation Database currently harbours 35,731 geo-referenced vegetation plots and 5,023 valid taxa across Mediterranean, temperate and alpine environments. The data are mainly used by the main contributors of the Alps Vegetation Database in an ecoinformatics approach to test hypotheses related to plant macroecology and biogeography, but external proposals for joint collaborations are welcome.
Keywords
biogeography, community structure, diversity, ecoinformatics, macroecology, mountain ecology, species distribution
Open Access
Yes
Create date
17/04/2016 15:40
Last modification date
20/08/2019 15:15
Usage data