| 1. |
- Barthelemy, Hélène, et al.
(författare)
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Effect of herbivory on the fate of added 15N-urea in a grazed Arctic tundra
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Mammalian herbivores can strongly influence nitrogen cycling and herbivore urine could be an important component of the nutrient cycle in grazed ecosystems. Despite its potential role for ecosystem productivity and soil processes, the distribution of N from urine in the different ecosystem compartments is poorly understood. This study investigates the fate of 15N enriched urea applied above the plant canopy in two tundra sites either heavily or lightly grazed by reindeer for the last 50 years. We explored the fate of the 15N in the different ecosystem N pools at 2 weeks and 1 years following tracer addition. We hypothesized that cryptogams would take up most N under light grazing, but graminoids most N under heavy grazing. The 15N-urea was rapidly incorporated in cryptogams and aboveground parts of vascular plants, while the soil microbial pool and plant roots sequestered only a marginal proportion of the labelled N applied. Hence, urine addition supports a higher primary production in tundra since most of the nutrients released from urine could be assimilated by the aboveground components with little N reaching the belowground compartments. Mosses and lichens still constituted the largest sink of the 15N-urea 1 year after tracer addition at both levels of grazing intensity demonstrating their large ability to capture and retain N from urine. Deciduous and evergreen shrubs were just as efficient as graminoids in taking up the 15N-urea. The total recovery of the labelled urea was lower in the heavily grazed sites, suggesting that reindeer reduce the N retention in the system. Rapid incorporation of the applied 15N-urea indicates that arctic plants can take advantage of a pulse of incoming N in the form of urea, which supports a higher primary production. However, whether urine also maintains a high production of forage plants depend on plant community composition, since most urea was recovered in non-forage plants for reindeer.
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| 2. |
- Barthelemy, Hélène, et al.
(författare)
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Short- and long-term plant and microbial uptake of 15N-labelled urea in a mesic tundra heath, West Greenland
- 2024
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Ingår i: Polar Biology. - : Springer Nature. - 0722-4060 .- 1432-2056. ; 47:1, s. 1-15
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Terrestrial animals are key elements in the cycling of elements in the Arctic where nutrient availability is low. Waste production by herbivores, in particular urine deposition, has a crucial role for nitrogen (N) recycling, still, it remains largely unexplored. Also, experimental evidence is biased toward short-term studies and Arctic regions under high herbivore pressure. In this study, we aimed to examine the fate of N derived from urine in a nutrient poor tundra heath in West Greenland, with historical low level of herbivory. We performed a pulse labelling with 15N-urea over the plant canopy and explored ecosystem N partition and retention in the short-term (2 weeks and 1 year) and longer-term (5 years). We found that all vascular plants, irrespective of their traits, could rapidly take up N-urea, but mosses and lichens were even more efficient. Total 15N enrichment was severely reduced for all plants 5 years after tracer addition, with the exception of cryptogams, indicating that non-vascular plants constituted a long-term sink of 15N-urea. The 15N recovery was also high in the litter suggesting high N immobilization in this layer, potentially delaying the nutrients from urine entering the soil compartment. Long-term 15N recovery in soil microbial biomass was minimal, but as much as 30% of added 15N remained in the non-microbial fraction after 5 years. Our results demonstrate that tundra plants that have evolved under low herbivory pressure are well adapted to quickly take advantage of labile urea, with urine having only a transient effect on soil nutrient availability.
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| 3. |
- Barthelemy, Hélène, et al.
(författare)
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Urine is an important nitrogen source for plants irrespective of vegetation composition in an Arctic tundra : Insights from a N-15-enriched urea tracer experiment
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Ecology. - : Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Inc.. - 0022-0477 .- 1365-2745. ; 106:1, s. 367-378
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 1. Mammalian herbivores can strongly influence nitrogen (N) cycling and herbivore urine could be a central component of the N cycle in grazed ecosystems. Despite its potential role for ecosystem productivity and functioning, the fate of N derived from urine has rarely been investigated in grazed ecosystems. 2. This study explored the fate of N-15-enriched urea in tundra sites that have been either lightly or intensively grazed by reindeer for more than 50years. We followed the fate of the N-15 applied to the plant canopy, at 2weeks and 1year after tracer addition, in the different ecosystem N pools. 3. N-15-urea was rapidly incorporated in cryptogams and in above-ground parts of vascular plants, while the soil microbial pool and plant roots sequestered only a marginal proportion. Furthermore, the litter layer constituted a large sink for the N-15-urea, at least in the short term, indicating a high biological activity in the litter layer and high immobilization in the first phases of organic matter decomposition. 4. Mosses and lichens still constituted the largest sink for the N-15-urea 1year after tracer addition at both levels of grazing intensity demonstrating their large ability to capture and retain N from urine. Despite large fundamental differences in their traits, deciduous and evergreen shrubs were just as efficient as graminoids in taking up the N-15-urea. The total recovery of N-15-urea was lower in the intensively grazed sites, suggesting that reindeer reduce ecosystem N retention. 5. Synthesis. The rapid incorporation of the applied N-15-urea indicates that arctic plants can take advantage of a pulse of incoming N from urine. In addition, N-15 values of all taxa in the heavily grazed sites converged towards the N-15 values for urine, bringing further evidence that urine is an important N source for plants in grazed tundra ecosystems.
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| 4. |
- Berner, Logan T., et al.
(författare)
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The Arctic plant aboveground biomass synthesis dataset
- 2024
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Ingår i: Scientific Data. - : Springer Nature. - 2052-4463. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Plant biomass is a fundamental ecosystem attribute that is sensitive to rapid climatic changes occurring in the Arctic. Nevertheless, measuring plant biomass in the Arctic is logistically challenging and resource intensive. Lack of accessible field data hinders efforts to understand the amount, composition, distribution, and changes in plant biomass in these northern ecosystems. Here, we present The Arctic plant aboveground biomass synthesis dataset, which includes field measurements of lichen, bryophyte, herb, shrub, and/or tree aboveground biomass (g m−2) on 2,327 sample plots from 636 field sites in seven countries. We created the synthesis dataset by assembling and harmonizing 32 individual datasets. Aboveground biomass was primarily quantified by harvesting sample plots during mid- to late-summer, though tree and often tall shrub biomass were quantified using surveys and allometric models. Each biomass measurement is associated with metadata including sample date, location, method, data source, and other information. This unique dataset can be leveraged to monitor, map, and model plant biomass across the rapidly warming Arctic.
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| 5. |
- Björkman, Anne, 1981, et al.
(författare)
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Plant functional trait change across a warming tundra biome
- 2018
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 562:7725, s. 57-62
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The tundra is warming more rapidly than any other biome on Earth, and the potential ramifications are far-reaching because of global feedback effects between vegetation and climate. A better understanding of how environmental factors shape plant structure and function is crucial for predicting the consequences of environmental change for ecosystem functioning. Here we explore the biome-wide relationships between temperature, moisture and seven key plant functional traits both across space and over three decades of warming at 117 tundra locations. Spatial temperature–trait relationships were generally strong but soil moisture had a marked influence on the strength and direction of these relationships, highlighting the potentially important influence of changes in water availability on future trait shifts in tundra plant communities. Community height increased with warming across all sites over the past three decades, but other traits lagged far behind predicted rates of change. Our findings highlight the challenge of using space-for-time substitution to predict the functional consequences of future warming and suggest that functions that are tied closely to plant height will experience the most rapid change. They also reveal the strength with which environmental factors shape biotic communities at the coldest extremes of the planet and will help to improve projections of functional changes in tundra ecosystems with climate warming.
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| 6. |
- Björkman, Anne, 1981, et al.
(författare)
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Tundra Trait Team: A database of plant traits spanning the tundra biome
- 2018
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Ingår i: Global Ecology and Biogeography. - : Wiley. - 1466-822X .- 1466-8238. ; 27:12, s. 1402-1411
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2018 The Authors Global Ecology and Biogeography Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd Motivation: The Tundra Trait Team (TTT) database includes field-based measurements of key traits related to plant form and function at multiple sites across the tundra biome. This dataset can be used to address theoretical questions about plant strategy and trade-offs, trait–environment relationships and environmental filtering, and trait variation across spatial scales, to validate satellite data, and to inform Earth system model parameters. Main types of variable contained: The database contains 91,970 measurements of 18 plant traits. The most frequently measured traits (>1,000 observations each) include plant height, leaf area, specific leaf area, leaf fresh and dry mass, leaf dry matter content, leaf nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus content, leaf C:N and N:P, seed mass, and stem specific density. Spatial location and grain: Measurements were collected in tundra habitats in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, including Arctic sites in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Fennoscandia and Siberia, alpine sites in the European Alps, Colorado Rockies, Caucasus, Ural Mountains, Pyrenees, Australian Alps, and Central Otago Mountains (New Zealand), and sub-Antarctic Marion Island. More than 99% of observations are georeferenced. Time period and grain: All data were collected between 1964 and 2018. A small number of sites have repeated trait measurements at two or more time periods. Major taxa and level of measurement: Trait measurements were made on 978 terrestrial vascular plant species growing in tundra habitats. Most observations are on individuals (86%), while the remainder represent plot or site means or maximums per species. Software format: csv file and GitHub repository with data cleaning scripts in R; contribution to TRY plant trait database (www.try-db.org) to be included in the next version release.
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| 7. |
- Callaghan, Terry V., et al.
(författare)
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Ecosystem change and stability over multiple decades in the Swedish subarctic : complex processes and multiple drivers
- 2013
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8436 .- 1471-2970. ; 368:1624
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The subarctic environment of northernmost Sweden has changed over the past century, particularly elements of climate and cryosphere. This paper presents a unique geo-referenced record of environmental and ecosystem observations from the area since 1913. Abiotic changes have been substantial. Vegetation changes include not only increases in growth and range extension but also counterintuitive decreases, and stability: all three possible responses. Changes in species composition within the major plant communities have ranged between almost no changes to almost a 50 per cent increase in the number of species. Changes in plant species abundance also vary with particularly large increases in trees and shrubs (up to 600%). There has been an increase in abundance of aspen and large changes in other plant communities responding to wetland area increases resulting from permafrost thaw. Populations of herbivores have responded to varying management practices and climate regimes, particularly changing snow conditions. While it is difficult to generalize and scale-up the site-specific changes in ecosystems, this very site-specificity, combined with projections of change, is of immediate relevance to local stakeholders who need to adapt to new opportunities and to respond to challenges. Furthermore, the relatively small area and its unique datasets are a microcosm of the complexity of Arctic landscapes in transition that remains to be documented.
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| 8. |
- Lett, Signe, et al.
(författare)
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Mosses modify effects of warmer and wetter conditions on tree seedlings at the alpine treeline
- 2020
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 26:10, s. 5754-5766
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate warming enables tree seedling establishment beyond the current alpine treeline, but to achieve this, seedlings have to establish within existing tundra vegetation. In tundra, mosses are a prominent feature, known to regulate soil temperature and moisture through their physical structure and associated water retention capacity. Moss presence and species identity might therefore modify the impact of increases in temperature and precipitation on tree seedling establishment at the arctic‐alpine treeline. We followed Betula pubescens and Pinus sylvestris seedling survival and growth during three growing seasons in the field. Tree seedlings were transplanted along a natural precipitation gradient at the subarctic‐alpine treeline in northern Sweden, into plots dominated by each of three common moss species and exposed to combinations of moss removal and experimental warming by open‐top chambers (OTCs). Independent of climate, the presence of feather moss, but not Sphagnum , strongly supressed survival of both tree species. Positive effects of warming and precipitation on survival and growth of B. pubescens seedlings occurred in the absence of mosses and as expected, this was partly dependent on moss species. P. sylvestris survival was greatest at high precipitation, and this effect was more pronounced in Sphagnum than in feather moss plots irrespective of whether the mosses had been removed or not. Moss presence did not reduce the effects of OTCs on soil temperature. Mosses therefore modified seedling response to climate through other mechanisms, such as altered competition or nutrient availability. We conclude that both moss presence and species identity pose a strong control on seedling establishment at the alpine treeline, and that in some cases mosses weaken climate‐change effects on seedling establishment. Changes in moss abundance and species composition therefore have the potential to hamper treeline expansion induced by climate warming.
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