Recently, the European alpine region undergoes substantial changes as far as land-use and climate are concerned and these trends are going to continue. The global average surface temperature has risen by about 0.3 to 0.6 degrees and the mean global temperature of the last decade was the warmest of the last 1000 years (IPCC 2001). Since plant growth in alpine tree-line ecosystems is temperature limited (Körner 1999), global warming is expected to have drastic effects on plant growth, vegetational composition and tree line position in the alpine region (Körner 1998, Rolland et al. 2000, Moiseev et al. 2004). These effects interfere with ongoing land-use changes. In the last few decades a majority of former agriculturally used grasslands in the Swiss mountain areas near the treeline have been abandoned because of decreasing commercial value. Some of these areas undergo a process of tree invasion while others do not. These meadows provide a unique opportunity to study natural regeneration dynamics of Norway spruce near the tree line. We investigated the regeneration patterns on a south-facing, since 1950 abandoned meadow at 1900 m a.s.l. in Sedrun, Kt. Graubünden, Switzerland. Tree establishment and growth dynamics were studied using dendroecological methods and an assessment of vegetation and soil was conducted in order to investigate the relationship between site properties and tree establishment. The following questions were of special interest: 1. Does the regeneration on this site consist of different successional states and is succession moving slope upwards away from the former forest edge? 2. In what dynamics does the process of tree establishment proceed? 3. Do growth patterns depend on the distance from the former forest edge and slope position and what factors control growth at this site?