An increasing number of studies have reported on forest declines and vegetation shifts triggered by drought. In the Swiss Rhone valley (Valais), one of the driest inner‐Alpine regions, the species composition in low elevation forests is changing: The sub‐boreal Scots pine ( Pinus sylvestris L.) dominating the dry forests is showing high mortality rates. Concurrently the sub‐Mediterranean pubescent oak ( Quercus pubescens Willd...

We propose a quantitative zonation of Switzerland based on the distribution of breeding birds. We use a combined dataset from two nationwide bird censuses 20 years apart to account for distribution changes between the censuses. This approach approximates the ‘potential’ distribution of species more closely than a dataset from one period only. A numerical approach with correspondence analysis and non‐hierarchical clustering res...