The view is endlessly beautiful on the mountain Getryggen in Jämtland, but it has and will change. The snow disappears earlier and earlier and the bare ground season is extended. At the same time, the trees climb up along the mountain slopes.
– It’s a nice feeling that comes when you’re in the mountains. The smell, the sound, the seemingly untouched nature that exists here, says mountain ecologist Lisa Öberg.
Lisa Öberg has followed the tree line since the 1990s and according to her it gives us an important indication of climate change. At most, the border has moved 240 meters upwards.
– Even the mountain streams that come from snowfields, places where the snow remains for a long time, dry up from the heat. It also becomes a problem for the reindeer who seek protection from the insects in the snow lodges. If the snow melts, they have to look further up the mountain, she says.
Heavy rainfall tears down bridges
Above all, it is the environment in the lower mountains that is undergoing transformation – it will take a long time before our highest Calf Mountains are affected.
– We will get used to it as people and visitors. However, we need to think about how we invest in facilities, in bridges and stretches of the mountain trails. Because we are already seeing heavy rainfall during the summer and maybe even in the middle of winter, which is tearing bridges down. It’s something we haven’t seen before, says Per-Olov Wikberg, coordinator at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s mountain safety council.
Would you say you are worried about the future of the mountains?
– I don’t see such a catastrophic scenario as some want to paint, that the mountains will become covered with trees. There are no prerequisites for that. But there can be tree growth higher up, of course, but not completely overgrown. Not our mountains here, says Lisa Öberg.