This paper deals with the vegetation development in four glacier forelands, aligned along a distance of 250 km from West to East in the siliceous Eastern Central Alps. The study employs a chronosequence approach, which assumes a temporal sequence in vegetation development by spatially different sites regarding time since deglaciation. The chronosequences cover the area between Little Ice Age (LIA) maximum glacier extent around 1850, and the current glacier terminus. Despite some shortcomings, chronosequences allow the identification of general patterns of primary succession of plants as a function of site age and local environmental conditions, e.g., changes in species richness, ground cover, plant functional traits, and community structure. While there is no shortage of chronosequence studies in glacier forelands of the Alps, a straightforward comparison aimed at the deduction of general successional trajectories is tricky, due to different procedures of vegetation sampling and data analyses. The comparative examination by a standardized sampling and analyzing protocol of four glacier forelands in the Eastern Central Alps presented here proves the existence of several common patterns in primary succession, but also diverging successional trajectories from West to East. While the pioneer stage in all glacier forelands is similar both floristically and structurally, from the early successional stage onwards, differences increase, leading to different phases in the late successional stage, which is shrub dominated throughout in the westernmost study site, herb–grass–dwarfshrub dominated throughout in the easternmost study site, and divided into an earlier herb–grass–dwarfshrub phase and a later shrub phase in the two study sites in between.

中文翻译：

---

东部高山冰川前陆植物初级演替过程中的常见模式和发散轨迹

本文探讨了硅质东部中部阿尔卑斯山沿西至东250公里的四个冰川前陆的植被发育情况。这项研究采用了时间序列方法，该方法假设植被发育过程中的时间序列是由从冰消开始到现在所处的时间在空间上不同的位置。时间序列覆盖了1850年左右小冰河时期（LIA）的最大冰川范围与当前冰川终点之间的区域。尽管存在一些缺陷，但时间序列允许根据站点年龄和当地环境条件（例如物种丰富度，地被植物，植物功能性状和群落结构的变化）确定植物主要演替的一般模式。虽然在阿尔卑斯山的冰川前陆上不缺少时间序列研究，由于采用了不同的植被采样和数据分析程序，因此很难直接进行旨在推论一般演替轨迹的比较。此处提出的通过对中部东部阿尔卑斯山的四个冰川前陆进行标准化采样和分析协议进行的比较检验证明，在一次演替中存在几种常见模式，但从西到东的演替轨迹也有所不同。虽然所有冰川前陆的拓荒阶段在植物学和结构上都相似，但从演替初期开始，差异不断增加，导致演替后期出现了不同阶段，在整个最西端的研究地点，草本-草-矮灌木丛在整个最东端的研究地点占主导地位，