Climate change in the High Arctic is predicted to result in more precipitation. The high Arctic is dominated barren polar dessert and more pre-cipitation is likely to promote plant establishment and greater plant cover, which will have important conse-quences at local and regional scales.
Due to the low amount of plant cover in polar desert, plant ecologist have focussed most of their studies on more fertile plant hot spots in the High Arctic. We therefore have very little knowledge about what effects climate change will have on polar deserts. |
This project aims to fill this knowledge gap by:
1) assessing soil and plant community changes after experimentally doubling summer precipitation for >20 years 2) investigating the effects of experimentally increased snow depth on the common plant species Arctic willow across soil types and climate gradients in the High Arctic. The results have implications for understanding regional and global carbon cycles and for Arctic biodiversity in a future wetter and warmer High Arctic. |
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The original purpose of this study was to investigate effects of altered precipitation on cryptogams through a large scale survey across Ellesmere Island. Due to the pandemic, the field work for this project was first postponed for one year and then shortened from 2 months to 2 weeks. The originally planned sampling plans became impossible and it was no longer meaningful to try to answer our original question with the given circumstances. So a new project was born!
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