Re-inventory of alpine heath vegetation after three decades

To assess possible effect of global warming, we re-visited two sub-Arctic heath sites which were previously part of a long-term intensive monitoring programme (from 1982-1994) and performed a new inventory of the vegetation by retracing permanent monitoring plots. This allowed an assessment of how vegetation species and communities have been affected by recent decades of rapidly changing climate, making use of the rare opportunity afforded by the existence of high-quality data from the earlier period. Changes in vegetation community were found since the earlier period, but these were largely shifts in the relative abundances of the same species as previously found rather than substantial species turnover