Towards rainy Arctic winters: effects of experimental icing on tundra plants and their soil conditions
Global warming comes with more frequent extreme climate events. In the Arctic, extreme warm spells with heavy rain-on-snow events in winter can cause dramatic changes to the snow-pack and encapsulate the vegetation in thick basal ice for several months. Ice-locked tundra can cause population crashes...
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ftntnutrondheimi:oai:ntnuopen.ntnu.no:11250/2636170 2023-05-15T14:46:06+02:00 Towards rainy Arctic winters: effects of experimental icing on tundra plants and their soil conditions Le Moullec, Mathilde Isaksen, Ketil Petit Bon, Matteo Jónsdóttir, Ingibjörg Svala Varpe, Øystein Hendel, Anna-Lena Beumer, Larissa Teresa Hansen, Brage Bremset 2019 http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2636170 eng eng Norwegian Meteorological Institute MET report MET report; http://met-xpprod.customer.enonic.io/publikasjoner/met-report Svalbards miljøvernfond: 16/113 Norges forskningsråd: 276080 Norges forskningsråd: 223257 http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2636170 cristin:1768111 31 08/2019 Research report 2019 ftntnutrondheimi 2020-01-15T23:32:26Z Global warming comes with more frequent extreme climate events. In the Arctic, extreme warm spells with heavy rain-on-snow events in winter can cause dramatic changes to the snow-pack and encapsulate the vegetation in thick basal ice for several months. Ice-locked tundra can cause population crashes in Arctic herbivores by limiting food plant availability, yet specific effects on the vegetation and soil layer properties are still largely unknown. We performed a four-year field experiment in mesic communities in high Arctic Svalbard to assess effects of ice-encasement on seasonal plant growth and reproductive traits, as well as soil temperature at different depths. Simulated rain-on-snow and resultant icing were further combined with summer warming (by Open Top Chambers) in a full-factorial generalized randomized block design. Icing caused a delay in community-level productivity (measured as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI) but also increased peak productivity in some years, compared with untreated (and warmed) plots. However, this occurred at the cost of reduced flower production in the icing plots. The delay in productivity was associated with a delay of both the thawing and spring-summer temperature increase in the upper soil active layer (especially 10-20 cm depth), which can affect plant roots. However, natural inter-annual variability in spring-summer weather, which caused shifts in spring onset (defined as when soil temperatures reach 0°C) of more than 3.5 weeks, exceeded most effects caused by icing or warming treatments. Our findings indicate that icing events mainly impact the soil-vegetation system by causing delays in seasonal development, followed by compensatory plant responses. However, they also suggest an overall resistance to such extreme events in this highly fluctuating environment. Thus, these results from high Arctic mesic vegetation – with absence of evergreen shrubs – contrast with some recent observations of “Arctic browning”, which have been linked with changes in winter weather events and snow conditions. publishedVersion Report Arctic Global warming Svalbard Tundra NTNU Open Archive (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Arctic Svalbard Browning ENVELOPE(164.050,164.050,-74.617,-74.617) |
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Open Polar |
collection |
NTNU Open Archive (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftntnutrondheimi |
language |
English |
description |
Global warming comes with more frequent extreme climate events. In the Arctic, extreme warm spells with heavy rain-on-snow events in winter can cause dramatic changes to the snow-pack and encapsulate the vegetation in thick basal ice for several months. Ice-locked tundra can cause population crashes in Arctic herbivores by limiting food plant availability, yet specific effects on the vegetation and soil layer properties are still largely unknown. We performed a four-year field experiment in mesic communities in high Arctic Svalbard to assess effects of ice-encasement on seasonal plant growth and reproductive traits, as well as soil temperature at different depths. Simulated rain-on-snow and resultant icing were further combined with summer warming (by Open Top Chambers) in a full-factorial generalized randomized block design. Icing caused a delay in community-level productivity (measured as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI) but also increased peak productivity in some years, compared with untreated (and warmed) plots. However, this occurred at the cost of reduced flower production in the icing plots. The delay in productivity was associated with a delay of both the thawing and spring-summer temperature increase in the upper soil active layer (especially 10-20 cm depth), which can affect plant roots. However, natural inter-annual variability in spring-summer weather, which caused shifts in spring onset (defined as when soil temperatures reach 0°C) of more than 3.5 weeks, exceeded most effects caused by icing or warming treatments. Our findings indicate that icing events mainly impact the soil-vegetation system by causing delays in seasonal development, followed by compensatory plant responses. However, they also suggest an overall resistance to such extreme events in this highly fluctuating environment. Thus, these results from high Arctic mesic vegetation – with absence of evergreen shrubs – contrast with some recent observations of “Arctic browning”, which have been linked with changes in winter weather events and snow conditions. publishedVersion |
format |
Report |
author |
Le Moullec, Mathilde Isaksen, Ketil Petit Bon, Matteo Jónsdóttir, Ingibjörg Svala Varpe, Øystein Hendel, Anna-Lena Beumer, Larissa Teresa Hansen, Brage Bremset |
spellingShingle |
Le Moullec, Mathilde Isaksen, Ketil Petit Bon, Matteo Jónsdóttir, Ingibjörg Svala Varpe, Øystein Hendel, Anna-Lena Beumer, Larissa Teresa Hansen, Brage Bremset Towards rainy Arctic winters: effects of experimental icing on tundra plants and their soil conditions |
author_facet |
Le Moullec, Mathilde Isaksen, Ketil Petit Bon, Matteo Jónsdóttir, Ingibjörg Svala Varpe, Øystein Hendel, Anna-Lena Beumer, Larissa Teresa Hansen, Brage Bremset |
author_sort |
Le Moullec, Mathilde |
title |
Towards rainy Arctic winters: effects of experimental icing on tundra plants and their soil conditions |
title_short |
Towards rainy Arctic winters: effects of experimental icing on tundra plants and their soil conditions |
title_full |
Towards rainy Arctic winters: effects of experimental icing on tundra plants and their soil conditions |
title_fullStr |
Towards rainy Arctic winters: effects of experimental icing on tundra plants and their soil conditions |
title_full_unstemmed |
Towards rainy Arctic winters: effects of experimental icing on tundra plants and their soil conditions |
title_sort |
towards rainy arctic winters: effects of experimental icing on tundra plants and their soil conditions |
publisher |
Norwegian Meteorological Institute |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2636170 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(164.050,164.050,-74.617,-74.617) |
geographic |
Arctic Svalbard Browning |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Svalbard Browning |
genre |
Arctic Global warming Svalbard Tundra |
genre_facet |
Arctic Global warming Svalbard Tundra |
op_source |
31 08/2019 |
op_relation |
MET report MET report; http://met-xpprod.customer.enonic.io/publikasjoner/met-report Svalbards miljøvernfond: 16/113 Norges forskningsråd: 276080 Norges forskningsråd: 223257 http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2636170 cristin:1768111 |
_version_ |
1766317370787233792 |