Effects of Climate Change on animal and plant species in Central Europe

This is a new research focus under construction.

During recent years a broad spectrum of publications supported the idea that organisms react more sensible and quicker to the current climate change than meteorological statistics can prove such tendencies. It also became evident that boreal and arctic species, especially on the northern hemisphere might be even more severely effected than tropical ones. However, most of our ecological data are from tropical and subtropical regions, and if not, they are from other continents than Europe. Data for central Europe are almost totally confined to area shifts in birds and some plant species.

But climatic changes may effect animals not only with respect to area of occupancy, but also with respect to behaviour and spatio-temporal resource utilization on location. Many animal species regularily migrate (e.g. birds, but also mammals, amphibians, fish etc.) and changed weather conditions may significantly change the migration patterns or the period of residence in a certain area. This may have consequences on whole ecosystems.

In this context Central Europe has two outstanding features: (1) It is a transcontinental crossroad for migrating species, especially birds, (2) As a consequence of the ice periods Central Europe disposes on a mixture of faunal and floral exements from very different biogeographical regions, like the Mediterraneans, the central Asian steppes, and the boreal realm. It is a unique prerequisite of Central Europe to allow for studys on the effects on climate change at the overlapping borders of different biogeographical regions.