“Are plant communities all alike or is every plant community unique in its own way?“ Team Shrub, represented by Isla and Anne, was part of a global study on plant community traits, published this week in Nature Ecology & Evolution!
Our study, the product of an international collaboration, found that plant communities are less different from each other than expected by chance. Most plant communities spread across two main gradients related to plant stature\seed size, and leaf acquisitiveness, which resemble closely those described for individual plants species. Filtering by environmental or abiotic processes may explain why plant communities around the world are less different from each other than previously thought. For example, when we were up the Kluane Plateau, pictured here, the conditions can definitely have an Arctic feel, and the plant community there, made up of low-growing shrubs, grasses and forbs, reminds us a lot of the plant communities we see 1000km away on the remote Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island in the Arctic.
You can check out the paper here https://go.nature.com/2S7KNMO .
Read more about the journey behind the paper here https://go.nature.com/2OWx7lR .
#sPlot #iDiv #TeamShrub #ecology #plants #flora #plantsofinstagram @edinunigeosciences @apecs.polar @polar.knowledge
The Yukon Arctic coast and Qikiqtaruk are areas with ice-rich soil, frozen year round. As the growing seasons are getting longer and the temperatures are warmer in summer months, the landscape is changing. Slump D, the retrogressive thaw slump in this photo, is a very dynamic part of the Qikiqtaruk landscape, and the headwall is retreating more and more every year. We aim to determine how Arctic ecosystems respond to warming and how plants will change, in order to make predictions about how climate change will develop in the future.
Is the Arctic is getting greener? How are new technologies enhancing research? Check out this article on the RGS website for more informationL https://www.rgs.org/geography/news/is-the-arctic-getting-greener/
Photo by Andrew Cunliffe #TeamShrub
#inthefield2018 #Qikiqtaruk #uedinburgh #Arctic #ecology #dronestagram #drones #yukonterritory #northerncanada #exploreyukon #ukinarctic #arcticresearch @apecs.polar @polar.knowledge @rgs_ibg @edinunigeosciences @nercscience
