Climate change can cause alpine meadows disappear in coming decades

Daily News & Analysis: A new study of changing mountain vegetation has suggested that some alpine meadows could disappear within the next few decades as a result of climate change.

The first ever pan-European study carried out by an international group of researchers revealed that climate change is having a more profound effect on alpine vegetation than expected.

Led by researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna, biologists from 13 different countries in Europe analysed 867 vegetation samples from 60 different summits sited in all major European mountain systems, first in 2001 and then again just seven years later in 2008.

They found strong indications that, at a continental scale, cold-loving plants traditionally found in alpine regions are being pushed out of many habitats by warm-loving plants....

An alpine meadow, shot by Vyacheslav Stepanyuchenko, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license