Journal
GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY
Volume 24, Issue 1, Pages E289-E302Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13879
Keywords
alien species; biotic interactions; dynamic vegetation model; European Alps; mountain environments; ornamental species; propagule pressure
Funding
- FP7 People: Marie-Curie Actions [FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF]
- IASIMOV [327616]
- ERA-Net BiodivERsA [I-1443-B25]
- Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the European Commission's Seventh Framework Program [IASIMOV 327616]
- ANR [ANR-11-INBS-0001AnaEE-Services]
- Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [I 1443] Funding Source: researchfish
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Across the globe, invasive alien species cause severe environmental changes, altering species composition and ecosystem functions. So far, mountain areas have mostly been spared from large-scale invasions. However, climate change, land-use abandonment, the development of tourism and the increasing ornamental trade will weaken the barriers to invasions in these systems. Understanding how alien species will react and how native communities will influence their success is thus of prime importance in a management perspective. Here, we used a spatially and temporally explicit simulation model to forecast invasion risks in a protected mountain area in the French Alps under future conditions. We combined scenarios of climate change, land-use abandonment and tourism-linked increases in propagule pressure to test if the spread of alien species in the region will increase in the future. We modelled already naturalized alien species and new ornamental plants, accounting for interactions among global change components, and also competition with the native vegetation. Our results show that propagule pressure and climate change will interact to increase overall species richness of both naturalized aliens and new ornamentals, as well as their upper elevational limits and regional range-sizes. Under climate change, woody aliens are predicted to more than double in range-size and herbaceous species to occupy up to 20% of the park area. In contrast, land-use abandonment will open new invasion opportunities for woody aliens, but decrease invasion probability for naturalized and ornamental alien herbs as a consequence of colonization by native trees. This emphasizes the importance of interactions with the native vegetation either for facilitating or potentially for curbing invasions. Overall, our work highlights an additional and previously underestimated threat for the fragile mountain flora of the Alps already facing climate changes, land-use transformations and overexploitation by tourism.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available