Article

The global climate change will affect all the ecosystems around the world, but the most rapid and sharp changes are expected in high mountain areas with one of the most sensitive biomes. Global climate is changing and this is obvious due to a wide range of observations. GLORIA is a monitoring program to determine the effect of climate global change on alpine plant communities, within the framework of which Georgia has been participating since 2001. The study sites and permanent plots in the Central Great Caucasus were chosen according to the GLORIA protocol (which is a standard for all target regions in the GLORIA network). The summits were monitored in 2001, 2008 and 2015 years. Our research presents the analysis of the data of 2008 – 2015 with the comparison to the previous period of 2002-2008. The study includes such aspects as: soil temperature, growing degree day (GDD), thermic indicator (S), thermophilization index (D). The average annual soil temperature did not increase during the monitoring period, however, there were some fluctuations in 2002-2003. GDD changed in different years, but there was no strongly increasing trend. The thermic indicator (S) decreased on all summits during monitoring period. This indicates the low degree of the thermopilization status of the monitored plots. There were no distinctive changes observed during monitoring period of 2008- 2015 years, hence the Central Great Caucasus did not face strong climate change at this time.