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openCC (other)Sep 2019View details →

Data for Lynn et al. “Soil microbes that may accompany climate warming increase alpine plant production”; accepted at Oecologia

Climate change is causing species with non-overlapping ranges to come in contact, and a key challenge is to predict the consequences of such species re-shuffling. Experiments on plants have focused largely on novel competitive interactions; other species interactions, such as plant-microbe symbioses, while less studied, may also influence plant responses to climate change. In this greenhouse study, we evaluated interactions between soil microbes and alpine-restricted plant species, simulating a warming scenario in which low elevation microbes migrate upslope into the distribution of alpine plants. We examined three alpine grasses from the Rocky Mountains, CO, USA (Poa alpina, Festuca brachyphylla, Elymus scribneri). We used soil inocula from within (resident) or below (novel) the plants' current elevation range and examined responses in plant biomass, plant traits, and fungal colonization of roots. Resident soil inocula from the species' home range decreased biomass to a greater extent than novel soil inocula. The depressed growth in resident soils suggested these soils harbor more carbon-demanding microbes, as plant biomass generally declined with greater fungal colonization of roots, especially in resident soil inocula. Although plant traits did not respond to the provenance of soil inocula, specific leaf area declined and root:shoot ratio increased when soil inocula were sterilized, indicating microbial mediation of plant trait expression. Contrary to current predictions, our findings suggest that if upwardly migrating microbes were to displace current soil microbes, alpine plants may benefit from this warming-induced microbial re-shuffling.

Energy feedbacks of northern high-latitude ecosystems to the climate system due to reduced snow cover during 20th century warming-I

This data file contains data for changes in atmospheric heating due to changes in snow melt, snow return, and total snow cover duration as modeled with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model for the area north of 50 degrees north latitude around the entire globe for the years 1910-1940. See Euskirchen et al. (2007) for full study details.

Energy feedbacks of northern high-latitude ecosystems to the climate system due to reduced snow cover during 20th century warming-II

Energy feedbacks of northern high-latitude ecosystems to the climate system due to reduced snow cover during 20th century warming-III

This data file contains data for the pan-arctic vegetation map depicted in Figure 1 of Euskirchen et al (2007). See Euskirchen et al. (2007) for further details on the construction of this map.

Energy feedbacks of northern high-latitude ecosystems to the climate system due to reduced snow cover during 20th century warming-IV

This data file contains data for changes in snow melt, snow return, and total snow cover duration as modeled with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model for the area north of 50 degrees north latitude around the entire globe for the years 1910-1940. See Euskirchen et al. (2007) for full study details.

Energy feedbacks of northern high-latitude ecosystems to the climate system due to reduced snow cover during 20th century warming-V

This data file contains data for changes in snow melt, snow return, and total snow cover duration as modeled with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model for the area north of 50 degrees north latitude around the entire globe for the years 1970-2000. See Euskirchen et al. (2007) for full study details.

opencc-zeroJul 2020View details →

Data from: Climate synchronises shrub growth across a high-arctic archipelago: contrasting implications of summer and winter warming

Climate change is most pronounced at high latitudes, where plant and animal populations are often strongly influenced by environmental fluctuations related to climate and weather. Environmental conditions can co-fluctuate over large distances and thereby synchronise primary production in space. However, large-scale studies of such spatiotemporal patterns remain rare in the Arctic, where short time-series and poor spatial replication have characterised the data available on both biotic and abiotic parameters. Here, we use dendrochronological tools to measure ring growth of a dominant dwarf shrub, the polar willow (Salix polaris Wahlenb.), previously found to reliably trace community-level vascular plant biomass production. We investigated climate drivers of vegetation growth and their role in the synchronisation of primary production across the rapidly warming archipelago of Svalbard (n = 8 sites, composed of 17 sub-sites, 0.06-293 km apart). We found contrasting effects of summer versus winter weather on ring growth and its spatial synchrony. Although an overall positive effect of summer temperature caused spatially synchronous growth, negative impacts of winter rain-on-snow events occurred only locally, potentially counteracting such synchrony. However, the anticipated increase in both summer temperature and spatial extent of rain-on-snow events, causing basal ice encapsulation of the vegetation, could change the relative importance of seasons for spatiotemporal dynamics of shrub growth. Because these shrub ring growth chronologies reflect annual fluctuations in total vascular plant biomass, fuelling the bottom-up controlled food-web, these results have large implications for our understanding of how climate change shapes tundra ecosystem productivity in time and space.

opencc-zeroJul 2020View details →

Data from: Climate warming drives Himalayan alpine plant growth and recruitment dynamics

<ul> <li>Understanding how climate influences plant reproduction and growth at contrasting range limits is crucial for predicting how species' ranges may shift in response to ongoing climate change. Trees and shrubs have shown warming-induced increases in performance at upper elevation limits but reduced performance at lower distributional limits due to warming-driven drought limitation. Whether these differential responses are also valid for alpine forbs exposed to accelerated warming remains largely unknown. </li> <li>We examined climate signal recorded in annual growth and recruitment over the past sixty years in the alpine forb Potentilla pamirica in Western Himalayas, and tested whether the responses to recent climate warming differ between dry steppe, wet alpine and cold subnival zone within the species 5250-5900 m elevation range. We reconstructed recruitment and growth chronologies from 1019 individuals spanning 1-73 years, and more than 21,500 annual growth rings.</li> <li>We identified contrasting climatic controls of recruitment and growth at opposite elevation range margins, as well as contrasting demographic trends identified from age distributions. In lower-elevation steppes, recruitment increased with high late-winter snowfall and decreased with high summer temperatures, while growth increased with high summer precipitation. Conversely, warm winters and summers in higher-elevation alpine and subnival zones support growth and recruitment, while snowy winters reduce them, especially at their upper elevation limit. The age distribution revealed greater numbers of younger individuals, indicating healthy growing populations, in the alpine habitat, while evidence of ageing plant populations was observed in steppe and subnival zones.</li> <li>Accelerated warming since the 1990s reduced growth and recruitment in dry steppes while supporting plant performance in the alpine habitat. The recruitment in the subnival zone did not peak during the past warmest decade due to concomitant extreme snowfall events. </li> <li>Synthesis: Our results bring novel information on population-specific climate dependency of plant recruitment, growth, and population dynamics, suggesting a high vulnerability of high elevation Himalayan ecosystems to climate change. This is partly balanced by high species longevity and slow radial growth securing a long-term population persistence. Continuing trends of extreme snowfall events at higher elevations and droughts at lower elevations may lead to species range contraction.</li> </ul>

opencc-zeroOct 2020View details →

Data from: Shade trees preserve avian insectivore biodiversity on coffee farms in a warming climate

Includes a dataset of avian insectivore occurance data from 77 avian insectivores from 1970 to 2018 used in "Shade trees preserve avian insectivore biodiversity on coffee farms in a warming climate" downloaded from GBIF. Also included are full Maxent models and raster projections for the best selected model for each species for all climate scenarios, as well as a file on which threshold was selected for each species. Also included is all R code used to generate the results, coffee farm locations where bird richness was estimated, and iButton temperature files.

opencc-zeroNov 2020View details →

Data from: Climate warming prolongs the time interval between leaf-out and flowering in temperate trees: effects of chilling, forcing and photoperiod

1. Leaf-out and flowering are two key phenological events of plants, denoting the respective onsets of visible vegetative growth and reproduction during the year. For each species, the schedule of vegetative growth and reproduction is crucial to the maximization of its fitness. Warming-induced advances of leaf-out and flowering have been reported frequently, however, it is unclear whether the responses of the two events are equal for any given species. 2. Using long-term phenological records in Europe, we examined simultaneously the responses of both leaf-out and flowering of four common temperate tree species to climate warming and further examined the effects of winter chilling, spring forcing and photoperiod on the responses of the two events. 3. We found that regardless whether flowering or leaf-out occurred first, the first event advanced more than the second during 1950 – 2013, resulting in a prolonged time interval between the two events. The temporal changes were also supported by a similar geographical trend that the time interval between the two events increased from cold to warm sites. Due to the warming-induced reduction in chilling, the spring forcing accumulated until the second event was increased more than the forcing accumulated until the first event, and that reduced the temperature sensitivity of the second event. In addition to the effect of chilling, the shorter photoperiod, associated with the advanced spring phenology, was also likely to substantially increase the spring forcing accumulated until the second event, which thus slowed down its advance, compared to the advance of the first event. The relative contributions of chilling and photoperiod to the increased forcing varied between species and events, with chilling mostly outweighing photoperiod. 4. Synthesis. This study provides the large-scale empirical evidence of prolonged time interval between leaf-out and flowering with climate warming. The unequal advances of the two events may alter the partition of resources between vegetative growth and reproduction and cause different changes of spring frost damage to vegetative and reproductive tissues, which may alter species fitness and further affect ecosystem structure and function.

opencc-zeroDec 2020View details →

Genomic vulnerability to rapid climate warming in a tree species with a long generation time

The ongoing increase in global temperature affects biodiversity, especially in mountain regions where climate change is exacerbated. As sessile, long-lived organisms, trees are especially challenged in terms of adapting to rapid climate change. Here, we show that low rates of allele frequency shifts in Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra) occurring near the treeline result in high genomic vulnerability to future climate warming, presumably due to the species' long generation time. Using exome sequencing data from adult and juvenile cohorts in the Swiss Alps, we found an average rate of allele frequency shift of 1.23×10-2/generation (i.e. 40 years) at presumably neutral loci, with similar rates for putatively adaptive loci associated with temperature (0.96×10-2/generation) and precipitation (0.91×10-2/generation). These recent shifts were corroborated by forward-in-time simulations at neutral and adaptive loci. Additionally, in juvenile trees at the colonisation front we detected alleles putatively beneficial under a future warmer and drier climate. Notably, the observed past rate of allele frequency shift in temperature-associated loci was decidedly lower than the estimated average rate of 6.29×10-2/generation needed to match a moderate future climate scenario (RCP4.5). Our findings suggest that species with long generation times may have difficulty keeping up with the rapid climate change occurring in high mountain areas and thus are prone to local extinction in their current main elevation range.

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →

Data from: Experimental warming in the field delays phenology and reduces body mass and survival: implications for the persistence of a pollinator under climate change

1. Climate change is rapidly altering thermal environments across the globe. The effects of increased temperatures in already warm environments may be particularly strong because organisms are likely to be near their thermal safety margins, with limited tolerance to additional heat stress. 2. We conduct an in situ field experiment over two years to investigate the direct effects of temperature on an early-season solitary bee in a warm, arid region of the Southwestern USA. Our field experiment manipulates the thermal environment of Osmia ribifloris (Megachilidae) from larval development through adult emergence, simulating both previous cooler (ca. 1950; nest boxes painted white), and future warmer (2040–2099; nest boxes painted black) climate conditions. In each year we measure adult emergence phenology, linear body size, body mass, fat content, and survival. 3. Bees in the warming treatment exhibit delayed emergence and a substantial increase in phenological variance. Increases in temperature also lead to reductions in body mass and fat content. Whereas bees in the cooling and control treatments experience negligible amounts of mortality, bees in the warming treatment experience 30–75% mortality. 4. Our findings indicate that temperature changes that have occurred since ca. 1950 have likely had relatively weak and non-negative effects, but predicted warmer temperatures create a high stress thermal environment for O. ribifloris. Later and more variable emergence dates under warming likely compromise phenological synchrony with floral resources and the ability of individuals to find mates. The consequences of phenological asynchrony, combined with reductions in body mass and fat content, will likely impose fitness reductions in surviving bees. Combined with high rates of mortality, our results suggest that O. ribifloris may face local extirpation in the warmer parts of its range within the century. 5. Temperature increases in already warm ecosystems can have substantial consequences for key components of life history, physiology, and survival. Our study suggests that the response of ectothermic insects to temperature increases in already warm environments may be insufficient to mitigate the negative consequences of future warming.

opencc-zeroDec 2019View details →

Data from: Functional traits, not productivity, predict openness to seedling recruitment in alpine plant communities under climatic warming

Understanding the degree to which plant communities are open to seedling recruitment is key to predicting how they will be impacted by climate change. We experimentally assessed whether communities assembled under colder climates were inherently more open to recruitment than warmer-climate communities, after controlling for differences in the current climate under which the communities were growing. We then tested whether variation in openness to recruitment could be explained by community biomass or by the plant functional traits of the community. The study was conducted in a climate grid of twelve grassland sites across southern Norway, differing systematically in temperature and precipitation. Along a 2000 mm precipitation gradient, we transplanted turfs with intact plant communities from alpine and sub-alpine sites into 2℃ warmer sites, and measured natural seedling emergence in these transplanted turfs vs. locally replanted control turfs at the transplant destination sites. Mixed effect models were used to assess the effect of origin (cold vs warm climate), biomass, and functional trait composition of the communities on seedling emergence. We further assessed variation in these effects across different climatic contexts (the temperature and precipitation gradients). Communities originating from colder climates were consistently more open to recruitment, with on average 44% more seedlings emerging, than the locally replanted control communities. The higher rates of seedling emergence in colder-climate communities were attributable to systematic differences in plant functional traits, but not in biomass. The colder-climate communities were composed of species with smaller leaves and lower maximum plant heights; traits that may make these communities less effective at excluding new recruits. These trait-related responses were not significant in the warmest sites and did not very across the precipitation gradient. Our results suggest that alpine species lack the competitive effect traits required to make their communities resistant to invasion by novel competitors under climate change.

opencc-zeroFeb 2020View details →

Data from: Herbivory and climate as drivers of woody plant growth: Do deer decrease the impacts of warming?

Vegetation at ecotone transitions between open and forested areas is often heavily affected by two key processes: climate change and management of large herbivore densities. These both drive woody plant state-shifts, determining the location and the nature of the limit between open and tree or shrub-dominated landscapes. In order to adapt management to prevailing and future climate, we need to understand how browsing and climatic factors together affect the growth of plants at biome borders. To disentangle herbivory and climate effects, we combined long-term tree growth monitoring and dendroecology to investigate woody plant growth under different temperatures and red deer (Cervus elaphus) herbivory pressures at forest-moorland ecotones in the Scottish highlands. Reforestation and deer densities are core and conflicting management concerns in the area, and there is an urgent need for additional knowledge. We found that deer herbivory and climate had significant and interactive effects on tree growth: in the presence of red deer, pine (Pinus sylvestris) growth responded more strongly to annual temperature than in the absence of deer, possibly reflecting differing plant-plant competition and facilitation conditions. As expected, pine growth was negatively related to deer density and positively to temperature. However, at the tree population level, warming decreased growth when more than 60% of shoots were browsed. Heather (Calluna vulgaris) growth was negatively related to temperature and the direction of the response to deer switched from negative to positive when mean annual temperatures fell below 6.0°C. In addition, our models allow estimates to be made of how woody plant growth responds under specific combinations of temperature and herbivory, and show how deer management can be adapted to predicted climatic changes in order to more effectively achieve reforestation goals. Our results support the hypothesis that temperature and herbivory have interactive effects on woody plant growth, and thus accounting for just one of these two factors is insufficient for understanding plant growth mechanics at biome transitions. Furthermore, we show that climate-driven woody plant growth increases can be negated by herbivory.

opencc-zeroMar 2020View details →

Phenological responses to climate warming in temperate moths and butterflies: species traits predict future changes in voltinism

Changes in the number of generations per year (voltinism) have been among the most common phenological responses to climate warming in insects inhabiting seasonal environments. Nevertheless, numerous species have maintained univoltine (one generation per year) phenology with increasing temperatures, indicating the involvement of phylogenetic, ecological or some other constraints on phenological change. I examined geographic variation in voltinism in moths and butterflies of Northern Europe to identify species traits that might predispose species to univoltine/multivoltine phenology. I focused on species with a wide latitudinal distribution range (15 degrees as a minimum) which makes it unlikely that constraints imposed by season length could preclude multivoltinism across their distribution. Almost half of the 731 moth and butterfly species considered appear to have a single generation throughout their entire European range. A univoltine life-cycle across a wide latitudinal gradient suggests the presence of some constraint that makes additional generations either impossible or at least strongly disadvantageous, which will unlikely change with future climate warming. The scattered distribution of univoltine and multivoltine species across the lepidopteran phylogeny indicates that phylogenetic constraints are not strongly limiting changes in voltinism, and the trait is open to ecologically-driven adaptive evolution. My data show that species with one generation per year are generally larger than multivoltine species, but size forms no absolute constraint to having multiple generations per year. Obligately univoltine species dominate among egg and adult overwinterers (life-histories typical of so-called spring-feeders), whereas species with capacity for multiple generations prevail among pupal overwinterers. Multivoltinism is also infrequent among species feeding on grasses, particularly in endophagous grass-feeders. Larval diet breadth has no discernible effect on voltinism. Given the diverse ecological consequences of voltinism and its changes, accounting for the species' capacity for multivoltinism may be a key to address future challenges in biodiversity conservation and pest management.

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Forest reorganisation effects on fuel moisture content can exceed changes due to climate warming in wet temperate forests

48-year modelled dataset of below canopy fuel moisture content (FMC) for field sites established in wet temperate eucalypt forests in south-eastern Australia (allsites.csv). Raw hourly data for input to the model (hrlyallsitesgit.csv).

opencc-by-4.0Oct 2023View details →