Plant phenology and performance in the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) plots at Utqiaġvik and Atqasuk, Alaska

• Main Authors: Robert Hollister, Katlyn Betway-May
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2022
• Subjects: ITEX; arctic ecology; plant phenology; alpine/tundra; vegetation species; Arctic; Climate change; Tundra; Alaska
• Online Access: https://search.dataone.org/view/urn:uuid:2847469c-d1a4-4f5d-9a37-e7450d13530c

Arctic ecosystems are changing in response to arctic warming, which is proceeding more than twice as fast as the global average. The International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) was established in the early 1990s to understand the effects of warming and environmental variability on tundra vegetation properties and ecosystem function. The ITEX program has been extremely valuable for detection of changes in tundra plant and ecosystem responses to experimental warming and to background climate change across sites that span the major ecosystems of the Arctic. These files contain data representing the periodic plant measures of all species within each plot in a text tab delimited format. The data presented are phenological development (date of leaf bud burst, inflorescence emergence, flower bud, flower opening, flower withering, seed development, seed dispersal, and senescence), seasonal growth (length of leaf, and length of inflorescence), seasonal flowering (number of inflorescences in flower within a plot), occurrence of events (yes or no for leaf, inflorescence, bud, flower, and seed), and annual growth and reproductive effort (number of leaves, diameter of rosette, number of branches, maximum leaf length, number of inflorescences, maximum inflorescence length, number of buds, number of flowers, and number of seeds) collected weekly or yearly for all plant species during the summers of 1994-2019 for 48 plots (24 experiment open-top chamber plots and 24 control plots) at four sites (Atqasuk Wet Meadow, Atqasuk Dry Heath, Utqiaġvik Wet Meadow, and Utqiaġvik Dry Heath) and during the summer of 2021 at two sites (Utqiaġvik Wet Meadow and Utqiaġvik Dry Heath).