A set of polymorphic loci was characterised using an enrichment library for the Australian alpine specialist, the chameleon grasshopper (Kosciuscola tristis), an atypical grasshopper known for its remarkable temperature-controlled colour change. The number of alleles per locus ranged from three to 20 and observed heterozygosity from 0.16 to 0.76. These are the first microsatellite markers for a...

In the project “Text+Berg" we digitize and archive the heritage of alpine literature from various European countries. In a first step our group digitizes all yearbooks of the Swiss Alpine Club from 1864 until today. The books comprise articles in German, French and Italian, a total of around 100.000 pages. This paper describes the corpus and the project phases towards its digitalization. We the...

Thirty-three debris fans and five small alpine basins on the south side of the rapidly uplifting Nanga Parbat Himalaya of northern Pakistan were assessed to determine how much alpine processes contribute to the overall denudation of the massif. A high-resolution digital elevation model was used to measure the volume of the small alpine fans and a few basins in the Rupal valley. These volumetric...

This paper presents some applications of the Maximum Likelihood (ML) texture tracking on displacement estimation of some alpine and antarctic glaciers surfaces. This method is adapted to the statistical characteristic of the new High Resolution (HR) Polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data. The ML texture tracking method is firstly reminded and a statistical model of HR PolSAR data is explained. The main...

In this study the genetic polymorphism of growth hormone (GH) gene as a candidate gene in livestock was investigated. Blood samples were randomly collected from 34 Alpine and 42 Saanen goats. DNA was extracted from blood samples and a 365 bp region of exon 5 of the GH genewas amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). PCR products were analyzed using single strand conformation polymorphism (...

Direct effects of climate change on animal physiology, and indirect impacts from disruption of seasonal synchrony and breakdown of trophic interactions are particularly severe in Arctic and Alpine ecosystems. Unravelling biotic from abiotic drivers, however, remains challenging because high-resolution animal population data are often limited in space and time. Here, we show that variation in an...

Based on the field investigation and long term remote sensing data, the dynamics of the alpine wetland in the river basin and their response to climate change were studied. Results showed the alpine wetlands accounted for 3.73% of total basin in 2010. Lake and river appeared an increasing trend in the past 30 years, with an increase of 34.36 % and 24.57%. However, swamp exhibited a tendency of ...

This paper presents some applications of the Maximum Likelihood (ML) texture tracking on displacement estimation of some alpine and antarctic glaciers surfaces. This method is adapted to the statistical characteristic of the new High Resolution (HR) Polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data. The ML texture tracking method is firstly reminded and a statistical model of HR PolSAR data is explained. The main...

Interspecific variation in life-history traits and physiological limits can be linked to the environmental conditions species experience, including climatic conditions. As alpine environments are particularly vulnerable under climate change, we focus on the montane-alpine fly Drosophila nigrosparsa. Here, we characterized some of its life-history traits and physiological limits and compared the...

Although soil invertebrates play a decisive role in maintaining ecosystem functioning, little is known about their structural composition in Alpine soils and how their abundances are affected by the currently ongoing land-use changes. In this study, we re-assessed the soil macrofauna community structure of managed and abandoned Alpine pastureland, which has already been evaluated 14 years earli...