Article

Global climate change impacts the phytodiversity and plant distribution. Plant species migration to newly favourable areas is already observable in many parts of the world. Though, the effect of global climate change on plant diversity and distribution along the soil moisture gradient is little studied. Thus, we compared historical and newly collected vegetation data, and we asked: 1) have species richness and species composition of vascular plants changed over the last >30 years along the soil moisture gradient? 2) Do global climate change induces the changes in plant species certain ecological characteristics? 3) Is plant species migration observable from dry to wet plant communities? We resampled study sites in the Kazbegi region, recorded >30 years ago. The hierarchical clustering, Principal Component Analysis and Sørensen index, as well as Landolt indicator values revealed the high similarity between historical and recent relevés. The comparison of species richness showed a significant increase of species richness in a recent data for wet and dry plant communities. Species migration wasn’t observed. In conclusion, the increase of species richness is most likely to be governed by land-use activities rather than by Global climate change. Key words: Global climate change, Cauc