Swiss Botanists Track How Alpine Plants Are Shifting Upward

Plant communities across the Swiss Alps are shifting, with some species moving to higher elevations while others vanish from sites where they were documented decades earlier.  An official update from the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF published on September 24 describes how the Flora Raetica project is documenting these shifts across Graubünden by comparing modern observations with botanical records from the 1930s.

Researchers are surveying 1,104 plots measuring 100 by 100 meters and tracking the distributions of roughly 2,500 plant species. During a recent survey near Davos, botanist Christian Rixen recorded a spruce growing at 2,520 meters, an elevation considered unusual for the species. 

Rixen says increasingly warm summers have pushed the regional treeline upward by about 400 meters over the past 50 years, although trees are still responding more slowly than changing climatic conditions.

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A Century of Change in Alpine Flora

The latest fieldwork is part of a much larger botanical inventory. Earlier Flora Raetica data show that volunteers have already contributed around 350,000 observations covering 2,700 species. 

Preliminary analysis found that 6.5% of species recorded in the 1930s have not yet been confirmed today, while 13% of currently documented species were absent from the historical flora.

The project also shows why repeated plant surveys matter: warming may create opportunities for some species while reducing suitable habitat for cold-adapted alpine plants.