Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
climate across the full summer temperature gradient in the Arctic in order to better
predict ecosystem responses to changing climate. This project focuses on frost-boils
because:
The processes that are involved in the self-organization of these landforms drive
biogeochemical
cycling and vegetation succession of
extensive
arctic
ecosystem.
Arctic ecosystems contain perhaps the most diverse and ecologically important
zonal ecosystems in the Arctic and are important to global carbon budgets.
The complex ecological relationships between patterned-ground formation,
biogeochemical cycles, and vegetation and the signi
cance of these relation-
ships at multiple scales have not been studied.
The responses of the system to changes in temperature are likely to be nonlinear,
but can be understood and modeled by examining the relative strengths of
feedbacks between the components of the system at several sites along the
natural arctic temperature gradient.
The project aims to answer six questions related to the biocomplexity of frost-
boil ecosystems:
How does the self-organization associated with frost boils occur?
How does the frost heave affect the soil biogeochemical processes within and
between the frost boils?
How do frost heave and biogeochemical processes affect plant communities?
How do the biological processes in turn feed back to control frost heave?
How do interactions between biogeochemistry, cryoturbation and vegetation
change along the existing arctic climate gradient?
How do the complex patterns associated with frost boils affect the tundra sys-
tems in a hierarchy of spatial-temporal scales?
6.6.2 Biocomplexity of the Arctic Tundra
Global climate change is expected to have a great impact on arctic areas including
tundra. Snowbed habitats develop in areas that accumulate large amounts of winter
snow and these habitats make up a notable component of the tundra biome. In
connection with the arctic environment role in global warming there exist some
aspects that are to be investigated:
the arctic ecosystem ability to adapt to current and predicted global change;
the dynamics of plant diversity and community structure along the internal
snow-gradient within the snowbeds and how these are affected by increased
nitrogen deposition;
seasonal shifts in soil microbial composition;
plant communities as separate entities with respect to nitrogen turnover and
partitioning;
Search WWH ::
Custom Search