Publications by authors named "Urs Albert Treier"
Widespread shrubification across the Arctic has been generally attributed to increasing air temperatures, but responses vary across species and sites. Wood structures related to the plant hydraulic architecture may respond to local environmental conditions and potentially impact shrub growth, but these relationships remain understudied. Using methods of dendroanatomy, we analysed shrub ring width (RW) and xylem anatomical traits of 80 individuals of Salix glauca L.
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- The study explores how climate change and past nutrient availability affect Arctic vegetation growth, focusing on Salix glauca L. at archaeological sites in Southwest Greenland.
- The researchers found that plants in areas with historical nutrient enrichment had wider growth rings and responded more positively to temperature changes compared to those in nutrient-poor areas.
- The results indicate that past human activities enhance vegetation growth in the Arctic, suggesting that nutrient availability should be considered in future assessments of plant responses to climate change.
Article Synopsis
- Research discusses how current global climate models are based on air temperatures but fail to capture the soil temperatures beneath vegetation where many species thrive.
- New global maps present soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at 1-km resolution for specific depths, revealing that mean annual soil temperatures can differ significantly from air temperatures by up to 10°C.
- The findings indicate that relying on air temperature could misrepresent climate impacts on ecosystems, especially in colder regions, highlighting the need for more precise soil temperature data for ecological studies.
Insect defoliations are a major natural disturbance in high-latitude ecosystems and are expected to increase in frequency and severity due to current climatic change. Defoliations cause severe reductions in biomass and carbon investments that affect the functioning and productivity of tundra ecosystems. Here we combined dendro-anatomical analysis with chemical imaging to investigate the direct and lagged effects of insect outbreaks on carbon investment.
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