The shrubification of the Swedish tundra – multidisciplinary monitoring for a consensus perspective
Kort beskrivning
In this project we establish a unique ground-based monitoring program of shrub growth in the subarctic Sweden, consisting of continuous stem diameter measurements attained from high-precision dendrometers.
The tundra shrub expansion provides some of the most striking examples of ecological change in the circumpolar region over the recent decades, with significant effect on the structure-function of the ecosystem and on the people depending on its services. Quantifying the global change responses of shrub communities remain, nevertheless, a significant challenge because high-resolution data are limited in space and time.
By combining these fine-scale plot-based data with retrospective multidecadal analysis of inter-annual shrub growth and xylem structure on an intra-annual scale, based on dendrochronology and quantitative wood anatomy, our aim is to improve our mechanistic understanding of long-term responses of shrub physiology and growth to natural changes in the environment.
