Effects of ice and floods on vegetation in streams in cold regions: implications for climate change
Riparian zones support some of the most dynamic and species-rich plant communities in cold regions. A common conception among plant ecologists is that flooding during the season when plants are dormant generally has little effect on the survival and production of riparian vegetation. We show that wi...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:4242568 2023-05-15T17:45:00+02:00 Effects of ice and floods on vegetation in streams in cold regions: implications for climate change Lind, Lovisa Nilsson, Christer Weber, Christine 2014-11 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242568 https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1283 en eng Blackwell Publishing Ltd http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1283 © 2014 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CC-BY Original Research Text 2014 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1283 2014-12-14T00:51:35Z Riparian zones support some of the most dynamic and species-rich plant communities in cold regions. A common conception among plant ecologists is that flooding during the season when plants are dormant generally has little effect on the survival and production of riparian vegetation. We show that winter floods may also be of fundamental importance for the composition of riverine vegetation. We investigated the effects of ice formation on riparian and in-stream vegetation in northern Sweden using a combination of experiments and observations in 25 reaches, spanning a gradient from ice-free to ice-rich reaches. The ice-rich reaches were characterized by high production of frazil and anchor ice. In a couple of experiments, we exposed riparian vegetation to experimentally induced winter flooding, which reduced the dominant dwarf-shrub cover and led to colonization of a species-rich forb-dominated vegetation. In another experiment, natural winter floods caused by anchor-ice formation removed plant mimics both in the in-stream and in the riparian zone, further supporting the result that anchor ice maintains dynamic plant communities. With a warmer winter climate, ice-induced winter floods may first increase in frequency because of more frequent shifts between freezing and thawing during winter, but further warming and shortening of the winter might make them less common than today. If ice-induced winter floods become reduced in number because of a warming climate, an important disturbance agent for riparian and in-stream vegetation will be removed, leading to reduced species richness in streams and rivers in cold regions. Given that such regions are expected to have more plant species in the future because of immigration from the south, the distribution of species richness among habitats can be expected to show novel patterns. Text Northern Sweden PubMed Central (PMC) Ecology and Evolution 4 21 4173 4184 |
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Original Research Lind, Lovisa Nilsson, Christer Weber, Christine Effects of ice and floods on vegetation in streams in cold regions: implications for climate change |
topic_facet |
Original Research |
description |
Riparian zones support some of the most dynamic and species-rich plant communities in cold regions. A common conception among plant ecologists is that flooding during the season when plants are dormant generally has little effect on the survival and production of riparian vegetation. We show that winter floods may also be of fundamental importance for the composition of riverine vegetation. We investigated the effects of ice formation on riparian and in-stream vegetation in northern Sweden using a combination of experiments and observations in 25 reaches, spanning a gradient from ice-free to ice-rich reaches. The ice-rich reaches were characterized by high production of frazil and anchor ice. In a couple of experiments, we exposed riparian vegetation to experimentally induced winter flooding, which reduced the dominant dwarf-shrub cover and led to colonization of a species-rich forb-dominated vegetation. In another experiment, natural winter floods caused by anchor-ice formation removed plant mimics both in the in-stream and in the riparian zone, further supporting the result that anchor ice maintains dynamic plant communities. With a warmer winter climate, ice-induced winter floods may first increase in frequency because of more frequent shifts between freezing and thawing during winter, but further warming and shortening of the winter might make them less common than today. If ice-induced winter floods become reduced in number because of a warming climate, an important disturbance agent for riparian and in-stream vegetation will be removed, leading to reduced species richness in streams and rivers in cold regions. Given that such regions are expected to have more plant species in the future because of immigration from the south, the distribution of species richness among habitats can be expected to show novel patterns. |
format |
Text |
author |
Lind, Lovisa Nilsson, Christer Weber, Christine |
author_facet |
Lind, Lovisa Nilsson, Christer Weber, Christine |
author_sort |
Lind, Lovisa |
title |
Effects of ice and floods on vegetation in streams in cold regions: implications for climate change |
title_short |
Effects of ice and floods on vegetation in streams in cold regions: implications for climate change |
title_full |
Effects of ice and floods on vegetation in streams in cold regions: implications for climate change |
title_fullStr |
Effects of ice and floods on vegetation in streams in cold regions: implications for climate change |
title_full_unstemmed |
Effects of ice and floods on vegetation in streams in cold regions: implications for climate change |
title_sort |
effects of ice and floods on vegetation in streams in cold regions: implications for climate change |
publisher |
Blackwell Publishing Ltd |
publishDate |
2014 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242568 https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1283 |
genre |
Northern Sweden |
genre_facet |
Northern Sweden |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1283 |
op_rights |
© 2014 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1283 |
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Ecology and Evolution |
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4 |
container_issue |
21 |
container_start_page |
4173 |
op_container_end_page |
4184 |
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