Supplementary material from "Sea-ice induced growth decline in Arctic shrubs"

• Main Author: Forchhammer, Mads
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Figshare 2017
• Subjects: Ecology; FOS Biological sciences; Arctic; Greenland; Svalbard; Betula nana; Sea ice; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3843634; https://figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Sea-ice_induced_growth_decline_in_Arctic_shrubs_/3843634

Measures of increased tundra plant productivity have been associated with the accelerating retreat of the Arctic sea-ice. Emerging studies document opposite effects, advocating for a more complex relationship between the shrinking sea-ice and terrestrial plant productivity. I introduce an autoregressive plant growth model integrating effects of biological and climatic conditions for analysing individual ring-width growth time-series. Using 128 specimens of Salix arctica , S. glauca and Betula nana sampled across Greenland to Svalbard, an overall negative effect of the retreating June sea-ice extent was found on the annual growth. The negative effect of the retreating June sea-ice was observed for younger individuals with large annual growth allocations and with little or no trade-off between previous and current year's growth.