Researchers from Aberdeen University are looking at the effect of climate change by repeating studies done 100 years ago.

The team involved in the international project studied six mountain summits to investigate how vegetation on mountain summits is changing as a result of global warming.

Francesca Jaroszynska followed in the footsteps of Peter Ewing, a field botanist who carried out the same surveys of the same mountain areas a century ago.

She found that plant life on the summits has changed significantly and that while many of the characteristic alpine species previously recorded are still present, there has been a huge increase in species that previously only grew lower down.

Alpine areas harbour high biodiversity, but are affected by climate.

In response to global warming, the altitudinal limits of species are shifting upwards, which is likely to replace specialist species in the future.

Ms Jaroszynska found that as the rate of climate change is speeding up, the rate of change in mountain summit vegetation is accelerating.

She said: "This European-wide project has made very exciting and revealing inroads into our understanding of the response of alpine plants to climate change.

"Revisiting mountains that were walked and loved by Ewing one hundred years earlier was like travelling back in time - the mountain summits may still be there, but what grows and lives on them is very transient and vulnerable to climate change.

"The approach of combining history and ecology to tackle one of the most pressing questions in ecology today is unique, and it is gratifying that Scotland, and Aberdeen University, has been able to contribute."