Responses of high Arctic sedge meadows to climate warning at Alexandra Fiord, Ellesmere Island, since 1980 ...

• Main Author: Hill, Geoffrey E.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2010
• Subjects: Alexandra Fiord; Arctic; Climate change; Ellesmere Island; Eureka; Nunavut; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0092712; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0092712

The global climate is changing rapidly and Arctic regions are showing strong responses to recent warming. Tundra response to climate change has been examined primarily through short-term experimental manipulations, which have not been corrobrated by long-term ambient change studies. I investigated changes in above and below ground biomass of wet sedge meadow communities to over two decades of ambient climate warming at Alexandra Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, in the Canadian High Arctic (79° N). Above ground standing crop was harvested from five sedge meadow sites in the early 1980s and in 2005 using the same methods, and comparisons between years were made at site and species scales. Similar comparisons were made for below ground biomass at one site. Analysis of climate data from two permanent weather stations (Eureka and Resolute) and from automatic climate stations at the site, showed that over the past 35 years this region of the High Arctic has experienced an increase of ca. 0.7° C per decade in ...