The influence of abiotic factors on the growth of two vascular plant species (Saxifraga oppositifolia and Salix polaris) in the High Arctic

Opała‐Owczarek, Magdalena; Pirożnikow, Ewa; Owczarek, Piotr; Szymański, Wojciech; Luks, Bartłomiej; Kępski, Daniel; Szymanowski, Mariusz; Migała, Krzysztof

doi:10.1016/j.catena.2017.12.018

Cited by 36 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…More surprisingly, recent dendrochronology studies from Greenland and Svalbard report on a deviation from the aforementioned clear and positive summer temperature responses (Forchhammer, ; Gamm et al, ; Opała‐Owczarek et al, ). In a coastal site in Svalbard, with twice as high precipitation levels as our inland site, Opała‐Owczarek et al () proposed that soil moisture and soil structure have a larger influence on S. polaris ring growth than temperature . Water availability through precipitation did not appear to influence S .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…More surprisingly, recent dendrochronology studies from Greenland and Svalbard report on a deviation from the aforementioned clear and positive summer temperature responses (Forchhammer, 2017;Gamm et al, 2017;Opała-Owczarek et al, 2018 Secondary growth in biomass production of shrubs is often overlooked. Especially shrubs' below-ground growth-the "hidden part of the iceberg"-has received little attention so far (Bret-Harte et al, 2002;Iversen et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Annual ring growth of a widespread high arctic shrub reflects past fluctuations in community‐level plant biomass

et al. 2018

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Long time series of primary production are rarely available, restricting our mechanistic understanding of vegetation and ecosystem dynamics under climate change. Dendrochronological tools are increasingly used instead, particularly in the Arctic—the world’s most rapidly warming biome. Yet, high‐latitude plant species are subject to strong energy allocation trade‐offs, and whether annual allocations to secondary growth (e.g. “tree‐rings”) actually reflect primary production above‐ground remains unknown. Taking advantage of a unique ground‐based monitoring time series of annual vascular plant biomass in high Arctic Svalbard (78°N), we evaluated how well retrospective ring growth of the widespread dwarf shrub Salix polaris represents above‐ground biomass production of vascular plants. Using a balanced design in permanent plots for plant biomass monitoring, we collected 30 S. polaris shrubs across five sites in each of two habitats. We established annual ring growth time series using linear mixed‐effects models and related them to weather records and 13 years of above‐ground biomass production in six habitats. Annual ring growth was positively correlated with above‐ground biomass production of both S. polaris (r = 0.56) and the vascular plant community as a whole (r = 0.70). As for above‐ground biomass, summer temperature was the main driver of ring growth, with this ecological signal becoming particularly clear when accounting for plant, site and habitat heterogeneity. The results suggest that ring growth measurements performed on this abundant shrub can be used to track fluctuations in past vascular plant production of high arctic tundra. Synthesis. Dendrochronological tools are increasingly used on arctic shrubs to enhance our understanding of vegetation dynamics in the world’s most rapidly warming biome. Fundamental to such applications is the assumption that annual differences in ring growth reflect between‐year variation in above‐ground biomass production. We showed that ring growth indeed was a robust proxy for the annual above‐ground productivity of both the focal shrub and the vascular plant community as a whole. Despite the challenges of constructing ring growth chronologies from irregularly growing arctic shrubs, our findings confirm that shrub dendrochronology can open new opportunities for community‐dynamic studies, including in remote places where annual field sampling is difficult to achieve.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…More surprisingly, recent dendrochronology studies from Greenland and Svalbard report on a deviation from the aforementioned clear and positive summer temperature responses (Forchhammer, 2017;Gamm et al, 2017;Opała-Owczarek et al, 2018 Secondary growth in biomass production of shrubs is often overlooked. Especially shrubs' below-ground growth-the "hidden part of the iceberg"-has received little attention so far (Bret-Harte et al, 2002;Iversen et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annual ring growth of a widespread high arctic shrub reflects past fluctuations in community‐level plant biomass

et al. 2018

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“…In addition to snow cover, soil moisture probably plays a major role in the distribution of vegetation communities in the Fuglebekken catchment [77]. Soil moisture, however, is also closely linked to the spatial variability of snow cover [78], particularly in early summer when snow patches still remain.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Fuglebekken catchment is a focus area for research on various topics, such as permafrost [36,37,73,74], soil nutrients [49,80], hydrology [81], pollutant concentration [42,82] and plant growth [77,83,84]. As all these topics are intimately linked to snow cover, the spatially resolved data sets presented in this study provide valuable background information for ongoing and future research in this region.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Terrestrial Remote Sensing of Snowmelt in a Diverse High-Arctic Tundra Environment Using Time-Lapse Imagery

et al. 2017

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Snow cover is one of the crucial factors influencing the plant distribution in harsh Arctic regions. In tundra environments, wind redistribution of snow leads to a very heterogeneous spatial distribution which influences growth conditions for plants. Therefore, relationships between snow cover and vegetation should be analyzed spatially. In this study, we correlate spatial data sets on tundra vegetation types with snow cover information obtained from orthorectification and classification of images collected from a time-lapse camera installed on a mountain summit. The spatial analysis was performed over an area of 0.72 km 2 , representing a coastal tundra environment in southern Svalbard. The three-year monitoring is supplemented by manual measurements of snow depth, which show a statistically significant relationship between snow abundance and the occurrence of some of the analyzed land cover types. The longest snow cover duration was found on "rock debris" type and the shortest on "lichen-herb-heath tundra", resulting in melt-out time-lag of almost two weeks between this two land cover types. The snow distribution proved to be consistent over the different years with a similar melt-out pattern occurring in every analyzed season, despite changing melt-out dates related to different weather conditions. The data set of 203 high resolution processed images used in this work is available for download in the supplementary materials.

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“…A warmer climate might extend the snow free period (Myneni et al, 1997) but there are contradicting indications of whether (Ueyama et al, 2013b;Lund et al, 2010;20 Kross et al, 2014) or not (Gamon et al, 2013;Oberbauer et al, 1998;López-Blanco et al, 2017;Lafleur and Humphreys, 2008) a longer growing season enhances seasonal carbon uptake and growth. Photosynthetic activity and plant growth further depend on soil moisture conditions (Gamon et al, 2013;Opała-Owczarek et al, 2018;Lafleur and Humphreys, 2008;Welker et al, 2004) and therefore, warming and shorter and shallower snow packs do not necessarily increase productivity (Zhang et al, 2008;Gamon et al, 2013;Yi et al, 2014;Huemmrich et al, 2010b, a;Parida and Buermann, 2014). Soil warming 25 promotes thaw and stronger drainage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the dynamics of vegetation productivity in circumpolar regions with different satellite indicators of greenness and photosynthesis

Walther¹,

Guanter²,

Heim³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. High latitude treeless ecosystems represent spatially highly heterogeneous landscapes with small net carbon fluxes and a short growing season. Reliable observations and process understanding are critical for projections of the carbon balance of climate sensitive tundra. Spaceborne remote sensing is the only tool to obtain spatially continuous and temporally resolved information on vegetation greenness and activity in remote circumpolar areas. However, confounding effects from persistent clouds, low sun elevation angles, numerous lakes, widespread surface inundation, and the sparseness of the vegetation render this. Delayed peak greenness compared to peak photosynthesis is consistently found across years and land cover classes. A particularly late peak of NDVI in regions with very small seasonality in greenness and a high amount of lakes probably originates from artefacts. Given the very short growing season in circumpolar areas, the average time difference in maximum annual photosynthetic activity and greenness/growth of 3 to 25 days (depending on the data sets chosen) is important and needs to be considered when using satellite observations as drivers in vegetation models.

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The influence of abiotic factors on the growth of two vascular plant species (Saxifraga oppositifolia and Salix polaris) in the High Arctic

Cited by 36 publications

References 69 publications

Annual ring growth of a widespread high arctic shrub reflects past fluctuations in community‐level plant biomass

Annual ring growth of a widespread high arctic shrub reflects past fluctuations in community‐level plant biomass

Terrestrial Remote Sensing of Snowmelt in a Diverse High-Arctic Tundra Environment Using Time-Lapse Imagery

Assessing the dynamics of vegetation productivity in circumpolar regions with different satellite indicators of greenness and photosynthesis

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