Impact of land use, natural disturbances and climate change on vascular plant diversity

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The aimed project is regarded as logical consequence to combine and integrate the hitherto own project activities and results in a final issue of regional as well as principal relevance for the mountain rainforest ecosystems in southern Ecuador. Three goals build up the framework of the intended project: (i) to continue the climate measurement (including service for other WGs) and to identify important climate change triggers for plant diversity changes by “extreme event analyses”; (ii) to close the missing link between natural, nature-near, and anthropogenic vegetation by detecting the elevational distribution of the occurring vascular terrestrial plant species on pastures, abandoned sites, and trails; (iii) to repeat the mapping of the landslides 10 years after a first equivalent procedure by the first applicant’s WG and to revisit the landslide vegetation investigated in 2002 to redetermine the related succession traits. While the majority of research on climate change impacts on biodiversity regards linear trends non-linear processes are mostly ignored. Hence, the requested project focuses on plant diversity responses on collateral events given by climate induced disturbances or stress such as droughts or sliding and by species invasions from man-made environs.