Conference Agenda

Plant species provide both positive and negative contributions to people’s quality of life (NCP). With climate change, we observe shifts in plant communities, which ultimately leads to a shift in NCP distribution. However, the future distribution of NCP has been poorly studied, especially in the context of glacier retreats, one of the most striking signs of climate change. With the retreat of glaciers, new lands (glacier forelands) are open for colonisation by plants and other living organisms. In our study, we are assessing the current distribution of plants species and thus, their NCP along 4 Italian glacier forelands. We then predict the future (100 years) distribution of plant species along the same forelands. We finally compare the future and current distribution of NCP along the glacier. Our findings suggest that we are facing a loss in species diversity in the future, and thus, a loss of NCP diversity. In addition, fewer species are supporting each remaining NCP, which can make them even more vulnerable to climate change. Even though mountain ecosystems are remote areas, geographically far from densely populated areas, they greatly contribute to people's quality of life and need to be protected.

The retreat of glaciers worldwide is followed by the loss of plants and insects from local communities. Changes in community composition cause changes in plant–animal interactions. However, the impact of glacier retreat on plant–animal networks remains poorly understood. Here, we analysed how glacier retreat directly influences plant–pollinator networks and indirectly through biodiversity change. We observed sharp changes in the diversity of plant and pollinator communities. Plant facilitation enhanced biodiversity in recently ice-free terrains, whereas shrub encroachment decreased species persistence in late stages. We also observed an increase in the frequency of species interactions following glacier retreat, but an ultimate decrease with glacier extinction. Our results indicate that cascading effects of glacier retreat on mountain ecosystems erode ecosystem services, including pollination and food production from pioneer, threatened species. Urgent conservation actions and management strategies are required for mitigating socio-ecological impacts of glacier extinction. Specifically, I propose that sustainable ungulate grazing may limit shrub encroachment while maximizing people–nature co-benefits by supporting biodiversity and increasing ecosystem services and health for sustainable food production and human welfare.

Plant colonization in glacier forelands has been studied for decades, mainly with the chronosequence approach (Pickett 1989) and less frequently by revisiting permanent plots (Fickert and Grüninger 2018). However, the latter approach can provide more reliable information on vegetation dynamics and climate change effects.

By revisiting permanent plots in two proglacial chronosequences in the Gran Paradiso National Park, spanning 5 to 165 years from deglaciation (Mainetti et al. 2021), this study aims to scrutinize how quickly vegetation colonization is occurring in present years. Thirty-six vegetation plots were surveyed in 2016-2017 and revisited in 2021-2022.

The speed of colonization was computed as the ratio between the increments in vegetation cover and species richness recorded in the last five years on permanent plots and those observed along the chronosequence.

Results showed that vegetation cover and species richness increased up to 17-19 and 14-21 times faster in recent years than predicted by the chronosequence, respectively.

Such rapid dynamics are likely related to climatic changes, e.g. higher summer temperatures and longer growing season, that favor the colonization from species of lower elevations. Further revisiting of such permanent plots in alpine proglacial forelands is necessary to better understand and strengthen these findings.

Springtails are edaphic arthropods particularly linked to glacial habitat and to cold biomes in general; they are the only group, among Alpine arthropods, including cryophilic ice-dwelling species, i.e. adapted to survive only in direct contact to the glacial ice: the so called “glacier fleas”. Their evolutionary history is strictly linked to the glacial history, and they represent an important portion of biodiversity at risk of disappearing with the ongoing climate change and subsequent glacier disappearance. Despite their relevance, springtail diversity and distribution in the European Alps have been few considered until now and, due to the lack of information, their diversity is underestimated hindering conservation efforts. Thank to four years of sampling on European Alp glaciers, the first comprehensive description of ice-dwelling springtails of European Alps through integrative taxonomy approach was presented, in order to give a first overview also of phylogeny, ecology and potentiality as biogeographic indicators of ice-dwelling cryophilic springtails. In addition to the two already known species, four other species new for science were described, two of them micro-endemic. Their current distribution suggests the presence of past refugia that should be considered the hub of future conservation project of glacial biodiversity.

By 2100, 49 to 83% of the world's mountain glaciers will disappear, opening vast areas for novel ecosystems to develop. These novel proglacial ecosystems lie at the head of watersheds and produce the key services (water, carbon-storage, biodiversity) needed by local people and nature. In the Tropical Andes, accelerated glacial retreat leads to environmental degradation aggravated by high levels of poverty that further harms people and ecosystems. Here, we propose an approach on a human scale to respond to global issues. We study whether rewilding Andean camelids (llama, vicuña, alpaca) to deglaciating pastures and downstream bofedales (peatlands) can accelerate the formation of novel proglacial ecosystems and related services. Through the study of two experimental systems: (1) a camelid exclusion system conducted since 2014 in the Cordillera Real, Bolivia; and (2) a camelid inclusion system at the Uruashraju glacier foreland, Peru, set up in 2019; and (3) an observational approach carried out in two additional valleys (Bolivia-Peru), we show that camelids contribute to the maintenance of the bofedales and facilitate the formation of novel proglacial ecosystems. Our study provides scientific support that native Andean camelids rewilding may favor adaptation to glacier retreat and inform conservation and management strategies in post-glacial landscapes.

The scientific community has made enormous progress in quantifying and anticipating the evolution of the Earth’s glacier volume, but a worldwide detailed analysis of the future evolution of glacierized areas and the associated ecological consequences has not yet been carried out. Thanks to detailed glacier evolution modeling, we analyzed the evolution of the 210 000 glaciers on our planet (excluding the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets) as well as the future ice-free topography and air temperatures that will appear and prevail in deglaciated areas until 2100. Depending on the greenhouse gas emission scenarios, the world’s glaciers area of 665 000 km2 in 2020 is projected to decrease by 22 ± 8 to 49 ± 15% until 2100. As a result, areas that become ice-free between 2020 and 2100 will cover from 149,000 ± 55,000 to 339,000 ± 99,000 km2 and consist of terrestrial areas (78%) and submarine (14%) as well as terrestrial (8%) overdeepenings. This will lead to the emergence of large terrestrial (rocks and sediments, grasslands, forests, etc.), marine (fjords, lagoons, coastlines) and freshwater (lakes, wetlands, rivers) ecosystems.