Assessments of recent tundra change based on repeated vegetation surveys.

• Results from experimental warming studies suggest tundra vegetation will respond rapidly and dramatically to climate warming, and indeed, NDVI data from remote sensing and repeat aerial photography suggest such changes may already be occurring. NDVI changes, however, may reflect responses to a variety of processes. Repeat measurements of permanently marked plots offer an invaluable opportunity to monitor detailed changes in vegetation composition and abundance. Here, we report results from a synthesis of repeat measurements of 195 permanent plots in Arctic and alpine tundra plant communities in North America (90 plots), Europe (82 plots), Asia (10 plots), Australia (12 plots), and Antarctica (1 plot) that were revisited at least twice between 1980 and 2010, with an average timespan of 13 years between first and last sampling periods. Annual air-temperature warming over the sampling period varied considerably among sites, ranging from slight cooling to increases of nearly 2°C per decade. In our preliminary analyses, we found significant tundra-wide increases in vegetation height as well as abundance of evergreen shrubs and graminoids, but declines in mosses. We anticipated that changes in vegetation height, abundance of deciduous shrubs, and percent of vegetated ground would be highest in areas where climate warming is occurring most rapidly, but found no support for these predictions in our observational dataset. It is possible that local vegetation dynamics in these areas are affected more by other longer-term non-equilibrium processes such as recovery from glaciation, or an alternative suite of local drivers, such as snow cover, precipitation, disturbance or herbivory.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Ekologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Ecology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Arctic

Climate Change

International Tundra Experiment; Vegetation change

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