BoRiS · uncovering the anatomical archive of annual RINGS to understand abiotic and biotic drivers of SHRUB growth at the range BORDER

uncovering the anatomical archive of annual RINGS to understand abiotic and biotic drivers of SHRUB growth at the range BORDER

Climate change is observed and predicted to profoundly affect Arctic and alpine tundra ecosystems. These ecosystems, at the border of woody plant growth, change at a faster rate than the global average. Growth responses of Arctic-alpine shrubs to climate change are variable and influenced by different factors. A detailed analysis of growth, from the intra-individual to the community level, is key to understand the plasticity of responses to climate change. How variation in growth and wood anatomical traits across environmental gradients occurs at intra-individual, intraspecific, and interspecific level is currently unexplored. BoRiS aims at uncovering the information archived in annual rings to gain novel insight on how responses scale from individuals to communities. Specifically, the objectives of BoRiS are to: i) provide fundamental knowledge on how individuals, species, and communities of shrubs living at the border of woody plant growth respond to climate change; ii) quantify the value of wood anatomical traits from Arctic-alpine woody species as indicators of biotic disturbances and climatological proxies, as well as test if their value as proxies varies across sites and environmental conditions; iii) provide improved spatio-temporal projections of the magnitude of change in Arctic shrub communities under ongoing and future change. We analysed how abiotic (e.g. environmental variability temperature, precipitation, nutrient availability, soil moisture) and biotic (e.g. defoliator insects) affected shrub xylem formation processes at different time scales (from years to centuries) and across environmental gradients. We verified the potential of shrubs growth as climatological proxy and quantified structural adjustments to altered growing conditions testing plants acclimation. We reviewed state-of-the-art dendroecological studies of Arctic shrub dynamics and identified the main research gaps and potential solutions to upscale responses from local to landscape/regional scale. Finally, combining dendroecological and remote sensing time-series, we revealed dynamics in willow biomass across ice-free Greenland. The findings from BoRiS significantly advance our understanding on how Arctic-alpine shrubs will respond to climate change and will improve forecasts of vegetation dynamics and associated ecological impacts. This knowledge can also support sustainable management of tundra ecosystems under the ongoing global change scenario.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз