Predicting Long-Term Tundra Plant Community Change in Response to Warming

• Main Author: May, Jeremy
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: ScholarWorks@GVSU 2011
• Subjects: Environment; Life Science; Arctic; Tundra; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ssd/2011/Presentations/93

Arctic plants are adapted to low temperatures and turn temperature increases can cause dramatic changes in these plant communities. It has been shown that short-term warming experiments cause increased growth however as warming continues this growth may not be sustainable thus long-term community change may be difficult to predict. This study monitored four tundra sites in Alaska that has been done since the 1990s. In particular, we looked at how the plant communities changed over 11-13 years of warming. Communities were sampled after 1-2 (initial) and 4-6 years of warming (secondary) and changes were used to predict what the plant community assemblages looked like after tertiary warming. Initial warming responses were poor predictors of tertiary warming responses however, secondary warming responses were accurate predictors. Therefore, when using observed community change to predict future community change, it is important to partition out initial and secondary warming response.