Witness Glaciers receding and primary succession first hand in Switzerland

Opis:
HIke with me from Saas-fee to the Britannia Climbing Hut and see what is left as Swiss Glaciers recede rapidly. Switzerland has lost 50 percent of its glacial mass in the last 85 years. The change in average temperatures in europe has been twice the global average. An exceptionally hot dry summer which was preceded by a winter of little snow has some estimating 12 per cent of glaciers were lost in one year. Glacial recession or retreat leaves a laboratory for studying primary succession. In this video I describe the ecology of the pioneer communities that include crustose and foliose lichens, mosses and herbaceous plants.