A data-driven evaluation of lichen climate change indicators in Central Europe
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ORIGINAL PAPER
A data-driven evaluation of lichen climate change indicators in Central Europe Matthew P. Nelsen1
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H. Thorsten Lumbsch1
Received: 17 April 2020 / Revised: 13 August 2020 / Accepted: 23 September 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Lichens are widely utilized as indicators of air quality, forest health and climate change. In Central Europe, specific lichens have been designated as climate change indicators; however, the lichen biota of central Europe has been substantially altered by air pollution and only re-established during the past decades—complicating the interpretation of recent changes in lichen composition. To assess their validity as climate change indicators, we aggregated georeferenced records of these taxa and compared their historic and modern distributions. Modern distributions substantially differed for fewer than half of the indicator taxa with sufficient data to enable evaluation—reinforcing their utility as climate change indicators. However, modern distributions for approximately half of the taxa evaluated were largely confined to historically suitable climates—raising questions about their utility as climate change indicators. We were unable to model historic distributions for nearly two-thirds of all indicator taxa due to insufficient data. About one-third of these had multiple modern records but one or fewer historic records, suggesting they may indeed be expanding their range; however, about half had comparable or greater numbers of historic records relative to modern records, complicating their interpretation as climate change indicators. Together, our work illustrates that distributions for fewer than half of the lichen climate change indicators have substantially shifted in the recent past, and calls into question whether the remaining designated taxa are indeed strong positive indicators of climate change. We argue that more quantitative, evidence-based derivations of climate change indicators are required to accurately detect climate change. Keywords Lichens Climate change Biomonitoring Europe
Communicated by Pradeep Kumar Divakar. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-02002057-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Matthew P. Nelsen [email protected] & H. Thorsten Lumbsch [email protected] 1
Negaunee Integrative Research Center, The Field Museum, Chicago, IL, USA
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Biodiversity and Conservation
Introduction Lichens are well-known as bioindicators of air quality, forest health, and soil quality (Nimis et al. 2002). Since they may live and grow continuously for decades, or even hundreds of years, they exhibit cumulative responses to ecological changes. Standardized procedures such as the Index of Atmospheric Purity (LeBlanc and Sloover 1970), or guidelines such as the German Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) (Bartholmess et al. 2004) have been developed to monitor air pollution through the use of
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