Movemont – The Moving Mountains

The interdisciplinary project “movemont – The moving mountains”, aims to investigate mass movements in the Austrian Alps. These natural events, often triggered by factors like heavy rainfall or droughts have the power to reshape entire landscapes. While they are known for their destructive potential to both people and infrastructure, they also provide unique geosystem services that have received limited attention so far. For example, mass movements, despite their destructive nature, likely contribute to increased landscape heterogeneity and long-term biodiversity enhancement. Our study aims to reveal the influence of these mass movements on plant- and arthropod communities and their corresponding ecosystem functions such as herbivory and predation. For this purpose, we investigated landslides in the UNESCO global  geopark Ore of the Alps (Salzburg) and in the UNESCO global  geopark Karawanken (Kärnten). This project is funded by the  Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW)  Movemont