Arctic Plant Conservation

Arctic regions have warmed nearly three times as fast as the rest of the planet, and another 4-7°C of warming are predicted by the end of the century. Thus, Arctic plants will experience more rapid warming than any other ecosystem on Earth. Furthermore, while many species are expected to track their optimal climate northward as temperatures rise, Arctic plants are already at the northernmost edge of the Earth.

Understanding the consequences of climate warming in Arctic ecosystems is urgent not only for the conservation of Arctic flora and fauna; vegetation change in Arctic ecosystems will have global implications due to vegetation-climate feedbacks. Arctic permafrost soils contain more than double the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere. Changes in the vegetation can determine whether this carbon remains stored in soils and plant biomass or is released into the atmosphere, thus contributing to additional climate warming.

As part of this project, Dr Anne Bjorkman’s team (University of Gothenburg) are investigating vegetation responses to climate change. The goal of this work is to understand how variation in temperature across scales (from micro to macro) drives patterns in the diversity, composition, and traits of tundra vegetation.

An important aspect of this work focuses on the role of microclimate (i.e., small-scale variation in temperature as a result of local topography, for example) in buffering the impact of climate change on Arctic plant species. In order to accomplish this, they have collected seeds from dozens of Arctic plant species that will be used in a series of reciprocal transplant and common garden experiments in environmental chamber and field settings. The outcome of these experiments will reveal whether plant populations growing in areas with warmer microclimates might harbour the genetic variation necessary for Arctic plants to adapt to climate warming over the coming decades.

Seeds collected as part of the project will be processed and stored at the Millennium Seed Bank, ensuring that the diversity of these populations is protected for future generations.