According to some treatises, arctic and alpine sub-biomes are ecologically similar, whereas others find them highly dissimilar. Most peculiarly, large areas of northern tundra highlands fall outside of the two recent subdivisions of the tundra biome. We seek an ecologically natural resolution to this long-standing and far-reaching problem. We studied broad-scale patterns in climate and vegetati...

Species originally from alpine wetland and alpine meadow communities now coexist in a novel 'alpine swamp meadow' community as a consequence of wetland drying in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Considering the projected increase in the fluctuation of water supply from precipitation during the growing season in this area in the future, it is important to investigate the responses of the species tha...

There is little information available on injuries to World Cup skiers and snowboarders. The aim of this study was to describe and compare the injury risk to World Cup athletes in alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, snowboarding, ski jumping, Nordic combined and cross country skiing. We performed retrospective interviews with the International Ski Federation (FIS) World Cup athletes from selected n...

[1] The nature of the snowpack has the potential to strongly influence the patterns of alpine plant productivity and composition by governing soil moisture levels, growing season duration and the thermal regime of alpine soils. This study evaluates these relationships by modeling the interrelationships of snow depth, snow water equivalent (SWE), snow disappearance rate, soil moisture, attribute...

ALPNAP (Monitoring and Minimisation of Traffic-Induced Noise and Air Pollution Along Major Alpine Transport Routes) is a new project financed under the EU Interreg III B Alpine Space Programme. It will run from 2005-2007. A network of eleven institutions has been formed with DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics as the lead partner. The project aims at the integrated use of advanced science-base...

In traditional operating systems, modifying the network protocol code is a tedious and error-prone task, largely because the networking stack resides in the kernel. For this reason, among others, many have proposed moving the networking stack to user-level. Unfortunately, implementations of this design have never entered widespread use due to the impractical requirements they place on the user:...

Although diversity and limnology of alpine lake systems are well studied, their food web structure and properties have rarely been addressed. Here, the topological food webs of three high mountain lakes in Central Spain were examined. We first addressed the pelagic networks of the lakes, and then we explored how food web topology changed when benthic biota was included to establish complete tro...

European Alpine glaciology has a long tradition of studies and activities, in which researchers have often relied on the field work of some specialized volunteer operators. Despite the remarkable results of this cooperation, some problems in field data harmonization and in covering the whole range of monitored glaciers are still present. Moreover, dynamics of reduction, fragmentation and declin...

Alpine grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau are claimed to be sensitive and vulnerable to climate change and human disturbance. The mechanism, direction and magnitude of climatic and anthropogenic influences on net primary productivity (NPP) of various alpine pastures remain under debate. Here, we simulated the potential productivity (with only climate variables being considered as drivers; NPPP) ...

It has recently been proposed that microrefugia played an important role in species survival during past climate change events. However, the current distributions of microrefugia remain largely unknown. Wind-hole sites are areas affected by preferential flows of cool air generated in interstitial spaces created by rock fragments or colluvia. Alpine plant species occurring in lowland wind-hole s...