What Makes an Arctic Plant Predictable?
Presentation Type
Oral and/or Visual Presentation
Presenter Major(s)
Biology
Mentor Information
Robert Hollister, hollistr@gvsu.edu
Department
Biology
Location
Kirkhof Center 2201
Start Date
13-4-2011 11:30 AM
End Date
13-4-2011 12:00 PM
Keywords
Environment, Global Change, Life Science
Abstract
Recent documentation of Climate Change's impacts on arctic ecosystems have demonstrated that the Arctic will react to warming more rapidly and dramatically than other regions. As arctic plants respond to Climate Change, shifts in their phenology, growth, and reproduction will impact several major processes. Thus, predicting arctic plant responses to warming is critical to understanding how local and global systems will respond to climate change. Previous work has shown that growth and reproductive traits of some plants can be predicted using temperature and other abiotic factors. This study investigated whether plants' morphology or other properties could explain why some species respond to these abiotic factors while others do not. Preliminary analysis suggests that soil temperature is the best predictor of the majority of growth and reproductive traits across growth forms, indicating a common response to this environmental factor despite species' morphological differences.
What Makes an Arctic Plant Predictable?
Kirkhof Center 2201
Recent documentation of Climate Change's impacts on arctic ecosystems have demonstrated that the Arctic will react to warming more rapidly and dramatically than other regions. As arctic plants respond to Climate Change, shifts in their phenology, growth, and reproduction will impact several major processes. Thus, predicting arctic plant responses to warming is critical to understanding how local and global systems will respond to climate change. Previous work has shown that growth and reproductive traits of some plants can be predicted using temperature and other abiotic factors. This study investigated whether plants' morphology or other properties could explain why some species respond to these abiotic factors while others do not. Preliminary analysis suggests that soil temperature is the best predictor of the majority of growth and reproductive traits across growth forms, indicating a common response to this environmental factor despite species' morphological differences.