Feedbacks between moving mountain slopes and dynamic mountain plants

High mountain environments are disproportionately affected by climate change. Around the world, mountain glaciers are retreating, leaving unstable sediments behind. Thawing permafrost and changing rainfall conditions make many mountain slopes unstable and increase natural hazards. Plants colonize the newly available terrain, but also need to shift upslope to survive rising temperature, threatening biodiversity. What will happen in the future? Might unstable sediments and moving slopes limit plant colonization and shifts? Or can colonizing and shifting plants actually stabilize moving sediments and slopes? This depends on biogeomorphic feedbacks!

In this award lecture, I will take you on a journey through recent finding and advances in “mountain biogeomorphology”, the discipline investigating feedbacks between moving mountain slopes and dynamic mountain plants. Our journey will start in the front of retreating glaciers. Here, I will illustrate the strong biogeomorphic feedbacks between paraglacial geomorphic processes and vegetation succession, mediated by “ecosystem engineer” plants that not only stabilize moving moraine slopes but also promote periglacial landform development, soil formation and vegetation succession.

In a second part, I will evaluate the role of biogeomorphic feedbacks in a changing climate. Using a “biogeomorphic balance” concept, we will assess how biogeomorphic feedbacks can influence future slope movements, vegetation shifts, natural hazards and biodiversity in different scenarios. Finally, I will take you to the current research frontiers in mountain biogeomorphology. I will illuminate the yet not fully understood role of plant traits and sediment properties as key controls for biogeomorphic feedbacks. Subsequently, we will explore how increasing data availability and novel methods, including artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, can help to unravel biogeomorphic feedback mechanisms and dynamics. Thereby, mountain biogeomorphic research can advance understanding and mitigation of climate change impacts on high mountain environments.