Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales
Patterns and processes shaping ecosystems vary across spatiotemporal scales. As plant functional traits reflect ecosystem properties, investigating their relationships with environment provides an important tool to understand and predict ecosystem structure and functioning. This is particularly impo...
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecog.06397 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ecog.06397 |
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crwiley:10.1111/ecog.06397 2024-06-23T07:50:38+00:00 Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales Rissanen, Tuuli Niittynen, Pekka Soininen, Janne Virkkala, Anna‐Maria Luoto, Miska 2023 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecog.06397 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ecog.06397 en eng Wiley http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Ecography volume 2023, issue 7 ISSN 0906-7590 1600-0587 journal-article 2023 crwiley https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.06397 2024-06-06T04:21:48Z Patterns and processes shaping ecosystems vary across spatiotemporal scales. As plant functional traits reflect ecosystem properties, investigating their relationships with environment provides an important tool to understand and predict ecosystem structure and functioning. This is particularly important in the tundra where a changing climate may trigger severe alterations in plant communities as both summer and winter conditions are changing. Here, we investigate the relationships between key environmental drivers including summer temperature, snow persistence, topographic position and soil pH, and species height, specific leaf area (SLA) and seed mass as plant traits. The study is carried out at three spatial extents in the arctic–alpine region of Fennoscandia, modelling the trait‐environment relationships at each scale to investigate whether the relationships are scale dependent. Our results show that summer temperature and snow persistence are the most important variables explaining community trait composition. Temperature is important especially to vegetation height, which increased towards higher temperatures, whereas seed mass and SLA are related to snow persistence. Seed mass decreased towards longer snow persistence, while SLA responded in scale‐dependent ways. Topographic position and soil pH affect community trait composition moderately. Overall, our study demonstrates that trait‐environment relationships in the tundra are largely consistent across spatial scales. Our findings highlight the ecological relevance of snow for all three functional traits regardless of scale, showing that snow information could be particularly important to better understand large‐scale trends in plant community composition and ecosystem functioning as seasonal snow cover is shrinking globally. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Fennoscandia Tundra Wiley Online Library Arctic Ecography 2023 7 |
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Open Polar |
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Wiley Online Library |
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crwiley |
language |
English |
description |
Patterns and processes shaping ecosystems vary across spatiotemporal scales. As plant functional traits reflect ecosystem properties, investigating their relationships with environment provides an important tool to understand and predict ecosystem structure and functioning. This is particularly important in the tundra where a changing climate may trigger severe alterations in plant communities as both summer and winter conditions are changing. Here, we investigate the relationships between key environmental drivers including summer temperature, snow persistence, topographic position and soil pH, and species height, specific leaf area (SLA) and seed mass as plant traits. The study is carried out at three spatial extents in the arctic–alpine region of Fennoscandia, modelling the trait‐environment relationships at each scale to investigate whether the relationships are scale dependent. Our results show that summer temperature and snow persistence are the most important variables explaining community trait composition. Temperature is important especially to vegetation height, which increased towards higher temperatures, whereas seed mass and SLA are related to snow persistence. Seed mass decreased towards longer snow persistence, while SLA responded in scale‐dependent ways. Topographic position and soil pH affect community trait composition moderately. Overall, our study demonstrates that trait‐environment relationships in the tundra are largely consistent across spatial scales. Our findings highlight the ecological relevance of snow for all three functional traits regardless of scale, showing that snow information could be particularly important to better understand large‐scale trends in plant community composition and ecosystem functioning as seasonal snow cover is shrinking globally. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Rissanen, Tuuli Niittynen, Pekka Soininen, Janne Virkkala, Anna‐Maria Luoto, Miska |
spellingShingle |
Rissanen, Tuuli Niittynen, Pekka Soininen, Janne Virkkala, Anna‐Maria Luoto, Miska Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales |
author_facet |
Rissanen, Tuuli Niittynen, Pekka Soininen, Janne Virkkala, Anna‐Maria Luoto, Miska |
author_sort |
Rissanen, Tuuli |
title |
Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales |
title_short |
Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales |
title_full |
Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales |
title_fullStr |
Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales |
title_full_unstemmed |
Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales |
title_sort |
plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales |
publisher |
Wiley |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecog.06397 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ecog.06397 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Fennoscandia Tundra |
genre_facet |
Arctic Fennoscandia Tundra |
op_source |
Ecography volume 2023, issue 7 ISSN 0906-7590 1600-0587 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.06397 |
container_title |
Ecography |
container_volume |
2023 |
container_issue |
7 |
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1802641550915665920 |