Patterns of diversity in high Arctic snowbed plant communities at Alexandra Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Canada ...

• Main Author: Treberg, Michael Anthony
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Subjects: Alexandra Fiord; Arctic; Climate change; Ellesmere Island
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0089393; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0089393

This study examines the patterns of diversity within three natural snowbeds and one manipulated snowbed at Alexandra Fiord, Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic. Recent predictions of climate change in the Arctic suggest that not only will temperature increase, but also snowmelt will be earlier leading to a longer growing season. Experimental manipulations of snowmelt were begun in 1992 in a late-lying snowbed in order to determine the response of species to longer and shorter growing seasons. To measure the biomass of each species within the manipulated snowbed without destructively harvesting the vegetation, the point quadrat method of estimating total species area (TSA) was employed. Simple linear regressions of TSA and biomass for each species were constructed and were used to estimate biomass from only TSA data. For most species the variance explained (R²) was very high ranging, from 0.311 to 0.943. When diversity indices were calculated, there was essentially no difference between the values as ...