AlpsChange is an interdisciplinary doctoral program at the University of Salzburg that investigates how climate change is transforming alpine landscapes, ecosystems and societies. It brings together researchers from geology, biology, ecology and social sciences to study different facets of change in the Alps.

Project 3 focuses on mountain springs as alpine biodiversity hotspots and how the environment shapes the invertebrate communities in these habitats. Organisms like insect larvae, molluscs and crustaceans live in the substrate of all types of water bodies and are an integral part of their self-purifying power. Given their limited dispersal and specialized needs, we test if these spring dwellers can serve as „natural tracers“ of groundwater connections. At two study sites in the Alps, methods from hydrogeology and ecology are combined to find out which environmental conditions favor which species and how similar or different communities are across catchments.

By linking biological patterns with environmental data and hydrogeological models, the project tackles two core questions: (1) How are communities in alpine springs influenced by environmental filters and which effects are likely with climate change-induced shifts in water regime? (2) Can organism communities help to delineate groundwater flow systems, which are otherwise hard to observe?

Study sites are at  national park Gesäuse and UNESCO  global geopark Ore of the Alps. All projects of the AlpsChange program are funded by the doc.funds program of the Austrian Science Fund ( FWF).