Recent Growth and Expansion of Birch Shrubs Across a Low Arctic Landscape in Continental Canada: Are These Responses More a Consequence of the Severely Declining Caribou Herd than of Climate Warming?
The recent widespread expansion of deciduous shrubs across much of the Arctic has been largely attributed to climate warming. This study investigated decadal growth rates of dwarf birch (Betula glandulosa) across a low Arctic landscape in the continental interior of Canada. Detailed birch cover (100...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7666286 2023-05-15T14:53:02+02:00 Recent Growth and Expansion of Birch Shrubs Across a Low Arctic Landscape in Continental Canada: Are These Responses More a Consequence of the Severely Declining Caribou Herd than of Climate Warming? Andruko, Rhett Danby, Ryan Grogan, Paul 2020-01-09 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7666286/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-019-00474-7 en eng Springer US http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7666286/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10021-019-00474-7 © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Ecosystems Article Text 2020 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-019-00474-7 2020-11-22T01:37:38Z The recent widespread expansion of deciduous shrubs across much of the Arctic has been largely attributed to climate warming. This study investigated decadal growth rates of dwarf birch (Betula glandulosa) across a low Arctic landscape in the continental interior of Canada. Detailed birch cover (100 m(2) replicate plots) and individual shrub stature measurement datasets for five representative habitat-types were compared between 2006 and 2016, and evaluated in relation to environmental characteristics. Furthermore, dendrochronologically-based annual growth rates were assessed in relation to the 20-year climate record. Birch height, lateral dimensions, and patch groundcover all increased 20–25% relative to 2006 values, but these increases were similar among the habitat-types. Together, the limited evidence of recent warming at this site, the absence of significant habitat-type growth rate differences, and the lack of correlation between annual climate and stem secondary growth strongly suggest that climate change was not the principal cause. Instead, we propose that release from caribou impacts following the recent severe herd decline may explain the net shrub growth. Individual shrub growth rates were correlated with soil nutrient availability, but the latter was highly variable, suggesting that growth rates are primarily determined by fine-scale rather than habitat-scale spatial heterogeneity in nutrient supply. Together, our results demonstrate that birch growth has been enhanced across a variety of habitat-types in the Daring Lake landscape over the decade since 2006, and suggest that the recent severe caribou herd declines may be at least as significant as climate warming in driving birch shrub expansion in the Canadian central low Arctic. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10021-019-00474-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Text Arctic Climate change Dwarf birch PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic Canada Daring Lake ENVELOPE(-111.635,-111.635,64.834,64.834) Ecosystems 23 7 1362 1379 |
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English |
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Article |
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Article Andruko, Rhett Danby, Ryan Grogan, Paul Recent Growth and Expansion of Birch Shrubs Across a Low Arctic Landscape in Continental Canada: Are These Responses More a Consequence of the Severely Declining Caribou Herd than of Climate Warming? |
topic_facet |
Article |
description |
The recent widespread expansion of deciduous shrubs across much of the Arctic has been largely attributed to climate warming. This study investigated decadal growth rates of dwarf birch (Betula glandulosa) across a low Arctic landscape in the continental interior of Canada. Detailed birch cover (100 m(2) replicate plots) and individual shrub stature measurement datasets for five representative habitat-types were compared between 2006 and 2016, and evaluated in relation to environmental characteristics. Furthermore, dendrochronologically-based annual growth rates were assessed in relation to the 20-year climate record. Birch height, lateral dimensions, and patch groundcover all increased 20–25% relative to 2006 values, but these increases were similar among the habitat-types. Together, the limited evidence of recent warming at this site, the absence of significant habitat-type growth rate differences, and the lack of correlation between annual climate and stem secondary growth strongly suggest that climate change was not the principal cause. Instead, we propose that release from caribou impacts following the recent severe herd decline may explain the net shrub growth. Individual shrub growth rates were correlated with soil nutrient availability, but the latter was highly variable, suggesting that growth rates are primarily determined by fine-scale rather than habitat-scale spatial heterogeneity in nutrient supply. Together, our results demonstrate that birch growth has been enhanced across a variety of habitat-types in the Daring Lake landscape over the decade since 2006, and suggest that the recent severe caribou herd declines may be at least as significant as climate warming in driving birch shrub expansion in the Canadian central low Arctic. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10021-019-00474-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format |
Text |
author |
Andruko, Rhett Danby, Ryan Grogan, Paul |
author_facet |
Andruko, Rhett Danby, Ryan Grogan, Paul |
author_sort |
Andruko, Rhett |
title |
Recent Growth and Expansion of Birch Shrubs Across a Low Arctic Landscape in Continental Canada: Are These Responses More a Consequence of the Severely Declining Caribou Herd than of Climate Warming? |
title_short |
Recent Growth and Expansion of Birch Shrubs Across a Low Arctic Landscape in Continental Canada: Are These Responses More a Consequence of the Severely Declining Caribou Herd than of Climate Warming? |
title_full |
Recent Growth and Expansion of Birch Shrubs Across a Low Arctic Landscape in Continental Canada: Are These Responses More a Consequence of the Severely Declining Caribou Herd than of Climate Warming? |
title_fullStr |
Recent Growth and Expansion of Birch Shrubs Across a Low Arctic Landscape in Continental Canada: Are These Responses More a Consequence of the Severely Declining Caribou Herd than of Climate Warming? |
title_full_unstemmed |
Recent Growth and Expansion of Birch Shrubs Across a Low Arctic Landscape in Continental Canada: Are These Responses More a Consequence of the Severely Declining Caribou Herd than of Climate Warming? |
title_sort |
recent growth and expansion of birch shrubs across a low arctic landscape in continental canada: are these responses more a consequence of the severely declining caribou herd than of climate warming? |
publisher |
Springer US |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7666286/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-019-00474-7 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-111.635,-111.635,64.834,64.834) |
geographic |
Arctic Canada Daring Lake |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Canada Daring Lake |
genre |
Arctic Climate change Dwarf birch |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change Dwarf birch |
op_source |
Ecosystems |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7666286/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10021-019-00474-7 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-019-00474-7 |
container_title |
Ecosystems |
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23 |
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7 |
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1362 |
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1379 |
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