The GLORIA Multi-Summit Approach
At the GLORIA Conference 2010 Sept. 23-26, Perth, Scotland, around 100 members of GLORIA agreed on a refined and streamlined catalogue of methods resulting from the field experience of the first decade of GLORIA.
In summary, the components of GLORIA's Multi-Summit approach were divided into the two groups 'obligatory' and 'optional':
Obligatory activities:
- Species (vascular plants) recording in 16 1m x 1m quadrats:
- visual cover estimation
- point framing (100 points per quadrat as a new application)
- Species recording in 8 Summit-Area-Sections + abundance estimation defined on an ordinal scale (r!, very rare; r, rare; s, scattered; c, common; d, dominant)
- A careful photo documentation of plots and summit set-up
- Continuous soil temperature measurements (4 points per summit site)
Optional activities (in addition to the obligatory activities):
- Bryophytes and lichens recording
- Subplot-frequency of species in 1m x 1m quadrats (previously this was a standard method)
- Increase of 1m x 1m quadrats up to 32 per summit site
- Estimation of species cover in Summit-Area-Sections
- Line-pointing in 10-m squares (4 per summit)
The draft of a new Field Manual will be circulated early 2011, until then please be aware of these changes when downloading and using the out-of-date manual!
The new Field Manual v5 will also list a variety of additional activities (Invertebrates monitoring, plant functional types, transects, traditional knowledge, socio-economic aspects) as defined at the conference in workgroups or already applied at some sites.
If you intend to start any fieldwork, please contact the GLORIA administration first! (office.gloria@univie.ac.at)
For a detailed description of the GLORIA Multi-summit approach download the Field Manual v4 (English version, Versión española, Chinese version) here!
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The target region
This is GLORIA's basic approach. The main considerations in designing this approach were comparability, simplicity and economy for a effective network with a large number of sites. Four summit sites arranged along the elevation gradient are the minimum requirements for a GLORIA target region.
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Summit area sections
Summit divided into 8 sections: samples of the summit flora to detect species migration
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Quadrat cluster
with 4 permanent 1 m2 plots:
4 clusters per summit
(one in each main compass direction)
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1 m2 quadrats
detailed species cover sampling to detect changes in the species composition
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Frequency counts
in the 1 m2 quadrats to detect changes of vegetation patterns
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Temperature measurements
in each 3m x 3m quadrat cluster in one-hour intervalls to compare changes of the temperature
