 GLORIA's head office and central data base is affiliated to at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research) and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (Center for Global Change and Sustainability), Austria.On a pan-European scale, repeated surveys showed widespread thermophilisation of alpine vegetation, i.e., species compositions changed towards a larger percentage of thermophilous species at a concurrent decline of cold-adapted high-elevation species.Across Europe, species predominantly were shifting to higher elevations during the past decade.