Vienna, December 21 2009
Dear GLORIA members, colleagues and friends,
approaching the end of an other exciting year, the Vienna GLORIA team would like to thank you for the fruitful and encouraging cooperation and to briefly inform you about the progress in the GLORIA network during the current year.
In 2009, the network of long-term observation sites again experienced a considerable expansion, consisting now of 76 active target regions. Per continent, 4 new GLORIA sites were added in Asia, 2 in North America, 4 in South America, and 4 in Europe.
After the major resurvey in Europe in 2008, reinvestigations were conducted in two more regions in Europe and two in North America. Analysis of the European data sets is much in progress on questioning if and to what extent the vegetation on summit habitats has shifted towards a more 'thermophilic' species composition over a 7-year period. The development of an indicator on warming-induced changes in alpine plant diversity, in cooperation with the European Environment Agency, is in its final stage. New papers describing single regions were from the sites in British Columbia/Canada, New South Wales/Australia, Norway, Greenland, and the Dolomites-Southern Alps/Italy, the latter showing results of rerecorded plots. A worldwide view on alpine ecology provides the new textbook: The Biology of Alpine Habitats, Oxford University Press.
We much acknowledge the support from the Swiss MAVA Foundation for Nature Conservation (for regions in the European Alps, the Mediterranean, and eastern Europe), from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, and from a number of national, international and non-governmental institutions and organisations for site setup in South and North America and in Asia.
In the coming year, an international GLORIA conference will take place in Perth, Scotland/UK from September 23 to 25 (see: here) that is followed at the same place by the Global Change Conference on the World's Mountains. We would be happy to meeting in Perth representatives from many observation sites at GLORIA's 10th anniversary.
Thank you for all your efforts and dedication in the GLORIA network!
